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Distributed Snapshots

  • Reference work entry
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Algorithms

  • 137 Accesses

Years and Authors of Summarized Original Work

  • 1985; Chandy, Lamport

Preliminary Remark

The presentation of this entry of the Encyclopedia follows Chapter 6 of [15], to which it borrows the presentation style and all figures. The reader interested on this topic will find developments in [15].

The Notion of a Global State

Modeling the Execution of a Process: The Event Point of View

A distributed computation involving n asynchronous sequential processes p1, …, p n , communicating by directed channels (hence, a directional channel can be represented by two directed channels). Channels can be FIFO (first in first out) or non-FIFO.

A distributed computation can be modeled by a (reflexive) partial order on the events produced by the processes. An event corresponds to the sending of a message, the reception of a message, or a nonempty sequence of operations which does not involve the sending or the reception of a message. This partial order, due to Lamport and called happened before relation [

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Recommended Reading

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut Universitaire de France and IRISA, Université de Rennes, Campus de Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes, France

    Michel Raynal

Authors
  1. Michel Raynal
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Correspondence to Michel Raynal .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ming-Yang Kao

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Raynal, M. (2016). Distributed Snapshots. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2864-4_610

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