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D-Thespis: A Distributed Actor-Based Causally Consistent DBMS

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Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems LIII

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((TLDKS,volume 13840))

Abstract

Data Consistency defines the validity of a data set according to some set of rules, and different levels of data consistency have been proposed. Causal consistency is the strongest type of consistency that can be achieved when data is stored in multiple locations, and fault tolerance is desired. D-Thespis is a distributed middleware that innovatively leverages the Actor model to implement causal consistency over an industry-standard relational database, whilst abstracting complexities for application developers behind a REST open-protocol interface. We propose the concept of elastic horizontal scalability, and propose systematic designs, algorithms and a correctness evaluation for a middleware that can be scaled to the needs of varying workloads whilst achieving causal consistency in a performant manner.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    At the time of writing, a single m2-megamem-416 in GCP can have more than 5.5 TB of RAM, and a single u-24tb1.metal instance in AWS can have more than 24.5 TB of RAM.

  2. 2.

    https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/keeping-time-with-amazon-time-sync-service/.

  3. 3.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/time-sync.

  4. 4.

    https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/linux/time-sync.

  5. 5.

    https://getakka.net/.

  6. 6.

    https://getakka.net/.

  7. 7.

    https://akka.io/.

  8. 8.

    https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/.

  9. 9.

    https://grpc.io/.

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Acknowledgements

This work is partly funded by the ENDEAVOUR Scholarship Scheme (Malta), part-financed by the European Union - European Social Fund (ESF) under Operational Programme II - Cohesion Policy 2014–2020.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Information Systems, Faculty of ICT, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Carl Camilleri, Joseph G. Vella & Vitezslav Nezval

Authors
  1. Carl Camilleri
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  2. Joseph G. Vella
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  3. Vitezslav Nezval
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Joseph G. Vella .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. IRIT, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France

    Abdelkader Hameurlain

  2. IFS, Technical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria

    A Min Tjoa

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Camilleri, C., Vella, J.G., Nezval, V. (2023). D-Thespis: A Distributed Actor-Based Causally Consistent DBMS. In: Hameurlain, A., Tjoa, A.M. (eds) Transactions on Large-Scale Data- and Knowledge-Centered Systems LIII. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 13840. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-66863-4_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-66863-4_6

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