Adapting Commit Protocols for Large-Scale and Dynamic Distributed Applications

Abstract

The continued advances in distributed data intensive applications have formed an increasing demand for distributed commit protocols that are adaptive to large scale and dynamic nature of the applications to guarantee data consistency and integrity. Well known two-phase commit protocol and three-phase commit protocol and their variants do not provide scalability and flexibility desired for a wide range of applications with potentially different requirements on consistency and efficiency. In this paper, we present an adaptation of three-phase commit protocol for dynamic and scalable distributed systems. The protocol is not only resistant to dynamic network and node failures but also provides good scalability. Most importantly, it offers a set of adjustable parameters for a desired level of consistency at lowest cost depending on specific requirements of different applications.