Skip to main content
Springer Nature Link
Log in

Interactive checks for coordination avoidance

  • Special Issue Paper
  • Published:
The VLDB Journal Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Strongly consistent distributed systems are easy to reason about but face fundamental limitations in availability and performance. Weakly consistent systems can be implemented with very high performance but place a burden on the application developer to reason about complex interleavings of execution. Invariant confluence provides a formal framework for understanding when we can get the best of both worlds. An invariant confluent object can be efficiently replicated with no coordination needed to preserve its invariants. However, actually determining whether or not an object is invariant confluent is challenging. In this paper, we establish conditions under which a commonly used sufficient condition for invariant confluence is both necessary and sufficient, and we use this condition to design (a) a general-purpose interactive invariant confluence decision procedure and (b) a novel sufficient condition that can be checked automatically. We then take a step beyond invariant confluence and introduce a generalization of invariant confluence, called segmented invariant confluence, that allows us to replicate non-invariant confluent objects with a small amount of coordination. We implemented these formalisms in a prototype called Lucy and found that our decision procedures efficiently handle common real-world workloads including foreign keys, rollups, escrow transactions and more. We also found that segmented invariant confluent replication can deliver up to an order of magnitude more throughput than linearizable replication for low contention workloads and comparable throughput for medium-to-high contention workloads.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Notably, if O is a CRDT—i.e., O is a semilattice and every transaction \(t \in T\) is inflationary—then this periodic merging ensures that O is strongly eventually consistent [45].

  2. Another small difference is that IsIclosed behaves differently in Algorithm 1 and Algorithm 3. In Algorithm 3, IsIclosed returns a triple (closed, \(s_1\), \(s_2\)). If closed is false, then \(s_1, s_2 \in I\) are two states not in NR such that \(I(s_1)\) and \(I(s_2)\) but \(\lnot I(s_1 \sqcup s_2)\). If no such states exist, then closed is true, and \(s_1\) and \(s_2\) are null.

References

  1. Abadi, D.: Consistency tradeoffs in modern distributed database system design: cap is only part of the story. Computer 45(2), 37–42 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Ahamad, M., Neiger, G., Burns, J.E., Kohli, P., Hutto, P.W.: Causal memory: definitions, implementation, and programming. Distrib. Comput. 9(1), 37–49 (1995)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  3. Alvaro, P., Ameloot, T.J., Hellerstein, J.M., Marczak, W., Van den Bussche, J.: A declarative semantics for dedalus. Technical Report UCB/EECS-2011-120, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley (2011)

  4. Alvaro, P., Condie, T., Conway, N., Elmeleegy, K., Hellerstein, J.M., Sears, R.: Boom analytics: exploring data-centric, declarative programming for the cloud. In: Proceedings of the 5th European Conference on Computer systems, pp. 223–236. ACM (2010)

  5. Alvaro, P., Conway, N., Hellerstein, J.M., Marczak, W.R.: Consistency analysis in bloom: a calm and collected approach. In: CIDR, pp. 249–260 (2011)

  6. Alvaro, P., Marczak, W.R., Conway, N., Hellerstein, J.M., Maier, D., Sears, R.: Dedalus: Datalog in time and space. In: Datalog Reloaded, pp. 262–281. Springer (2011)

  7. Ameloot, T.J., Neven, F., Van den Bussche, J.: Relational transducers for declarative networking. J. ACM (JACM) 60(2), 15 (2013)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  8. Bailis, P., Fekete, A., Franklin, M.J., Ghodsi, A., Hellerstein, J.M., Stoica, I.: Coordination avoidance in database systems. PVLDB 8(3), 185–196 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Balegas, V., Duarte, S., Ferreira, C., Rodrigues, R., Preguiça, N., Najafzadeh, M., Shapiro, M.: Putting consistency back into eventual consistency. In: Proceedings of the Tenth European Conference on Computer Systems. ACM (2015)

  10. Balegas, V., Duarte, S., Ferreira, C., Rodrigues, R., Preguiça, N., Najafzadeh, M., Shapiro, M.: Towards fast invariant preservation in geo-replicated systems. ACM SIGOPS Oper. Syst. Rev. 49(1), 121–125 (2015)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Barbará-Millá, D., Garcia-Molina, H.: The demarcation protocol: a technique for maintaining constraints in distributed database systems. VLDB J. 3(3), 325–353 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Bernstein, P.A., Goodman, N.: Concurrency control in distributed database systems. ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR) 13(2), 185–221 (1981)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  13. Brewer, E.: Cap twelve years later: how the “rules” have changed. Computer 45(2), 23–29 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Cheung, A., Madden, S., Solar-Lezama, A., Arden, O., Myers, A.C.: Using program analysis to improve database applications. IEEE Data Eng. Bull. 37(1), 48–59 (2014)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Conway, N., Marczak, W., Alvaro, P., Hellerstein, J.M., Maier, D.: Logic and lattices for distributed programming. Technical Report UCB/EECS-2012-167, EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley (2012)

  16. Crooks, N., Pu, Y., Estrada, N., Gupta, T., Alvisi, L., Clement, A.: Tardis: A branch-and-merge approach to weak consistency. In: Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 1615–1628. ACM (2016)

  17. De Moura, L., Bjørner, N.: Z3: An efficient smt solver. In: International conference on Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems, pp. 337–340. Springer (2008)

  18. DeCandia, G., Hastorun, D., Jampani, M., Kakulapati, G., Lakshman, A., Pilchin, A., Sivasubramanian, S., Vosshall, P., Vogels, W.: Dynamo: amazon’s highly available key-value store. In: ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, vol. 41, pp. 205–220. ACM (2007)

  19. Difallah, D.E., Pavlo, A., Curino, C., Cudre-Mauroux, P.: OLTP-bench: an extensible testbed for benchmarking relational databases. PVLDB 7(4), 277–288 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  20. Gilbert, S., Lynch, N.: Brewer’s conjecture and the feasibility of consistent, available, partition-tolerant web services. ACM SIGACT News 33(2), 51–59 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Gotsman, A., Yang, H., Ferreira, C., Najafzadeh, M., Shapiro, M.: ’cause i’m strong enough: reasoning about consistency choices in distributed systems. ACM SIGPLAN Notices 51(1), 371–384 (2016)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Grefen, P.W., Apers, P.M.: Integrity control in relational database systems—an overview. Data Knowl. Eng. 10(2), 187–223 (1993)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Gupta, A., Widom, J.: Local verification of global integrity constraints in distributed databases. ACM SIGMOD Rec. 22(2), 49–58 (1993)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Hellerstein, J.M.: The declarative imperative: experiences and conjectures in distributed logic. ACM SIGMOD Rec. 39(1), 5–19 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Herlihy, M.P., Wing, J.M.: Linearizability: a correctness condition for concurrent objects. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst. (TOPLAS) 12(3), 463–492 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Hoare, C.A.R.: An axiomatic basis for computer programming. Commun. ACM 12(10), 576–580 (1969)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Kaki, G., Priya, S., Sivaramakrishnan, K., Jagannathan, S.: Mergeable replicated data types. Proc. ACM Program. Lang. 3(OOPSLA), 1–29 (2019)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Kröning, D., Rümmer, P., Weissenbacher, G.: A proposal for a theory of finite sets, lists, and maps for the SMT-LIB standard. In: Informal Proceedings, 7th International Workshop on Satisfiability Modulo Theories at CADE, vol. 22 (2009)

  29. Lamport, L.: The part-time parliament. ACM Trans. Comput. Syst. 16(2), 133–169 (1998)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Lamport, L., et al.: Paxos made simple. ACM Sigact News 32(4), 18–25 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  31. Li, C., Leitão, J., Clement, A., Preguiça, N., Rodrigues, R., Vafeiadis, V.: Automating the choice of consistency levels in replicated systems. In: 2014 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC 14), pp. 281–292 (2014)

  32. Li, C., Porto, D., Clement, A., Gehrke, J., Preguiça, N., Rodrigues, R.: Making geo-replicated systems fast as possible, consistent when necessary. In: Presented as part of the 10th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 12), pp. 265–278 (2012)

  33. Lipton, R.J., Sandberg, J.S.: Pram: A scalable shared memory. Technical Report TR-180-88, Computer Science Department, Princeton University (1988)

  34. Liskov, B., Cowling, J.: Viewstamped replication revisited. Technical Report MIT-CSAIL-TR-2012-021, CSAIL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2012)

  35. Lloyd, W., Freedman, M.J., Kaminsky, M., Andersen, D.G.: Don’t settle for eventual: scalable causal consistency for wide-area storage with cops. In: Proceedings of the Twenty-Third ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pp. 401–416. ACM (2011)

  36. Mehdi, S.A., Littley, C., Crooks, N., Alvisi, L., Bronson, N., Lloyd, W.: I can’t believe it’s not causal! scalable causal consistency with no slowdown cascades. In: NSDI, pp. 453–468 (2017)

  37. Mohan, C., Lindsay, B., Obermarck, R.: Transaction management in the r* distributed database management system. ACM Trans. Database Syst. (TODS) 11(4), 378–396 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Mu, S., Nelson, L., Lloyd, W., Li, J.: Consolidating concurrency control and consensus for commits under conflicts. In: OSDI, pp. 517–532 (2016)

  39. O’Neil, P.E.: The escrow transactional method. ACM Trans. Database Syst. (TODS) 11(4), 405–430 (1986)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Ongaro, D., Ousterhout, J.K.: In search of an understandable consensus algorithm. In: USENIX Annual Technical Conference, pp. 305–319 (2014)

  41. Ramachandra, K., Guravannavar, R., Sudarshan, S.: Program analysis and transformation for holistic optimization of database applications. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on State of the Art in Java Program analysis, pp. 39–44. ACM (2012)

  42. Roy, S., Kot, L., Bender, G., Ding, B., Hojjat, H., Koch, C., Foster, N., Gehrke, J.: The homeostasis protocol: avoiding transaction coordination through program analysis. In: Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 1311–1326. ACM (2015)

  43. Schneider, F.B.: Implementing fault-tolerant services using the state machine approach: a tutorial. ACM Comput. Surv. (CSUR) 22(4), 299–319 (1990)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  44. Shapiro, M., Preguiça, N., Baquero, C., Zawirski, M.: A comprehensive study of convergent and commutative replicated data types. Ph.D. thesis, Inria–Centre Paris-Rocquencourt; INRIA (2011)

  45. Shapiro, M., Preguiça, N., Baquero, C., Zawirski, M.: Conflict-free replicated data types. In: Symposium on Self-Stabilizing Systems, pp. 386–400. Springer (2011)

  46. Terry, D.B., Theimer, M.M., Petersen, K., Demers, A.J., Spreitzer, M.J., Hauser, C.H.: Managing Update Conflicts in Bayou, a Weakly Connected Replicated Storage System, vol. 29. ACM, New York (1995)

    Google Scholar 

  47. Thomson, A., Diamond, T., Weng, S.-C., Ren, K., Shao, P., Abadi, D.J.: Calvin: fast distributed transactions for partitioned database systems. In: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 1–12. ACM (2012)

  48. Vogels, W.: Eventually consistent. Commun. ACM 52(1), 40–44 (2009)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Wu, C., Faleiro, J., Lin, Y., Hellerstein, J.: Anna: A KVS for any scale. IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng. (2019)

  50. Wu, Y., Chan, C.-Y., Tan, K.-L.: Transaction healing: Scaling optimistic concurrency control on multicores. In: Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference on Management of Data, pp. 1689–1704. ACM (2016)

  51. Zhang, I., Sharma, N.K., Szekeres, A., Krishnamurthy, A., Ports, D.R.: Building consistent transactions with inconsistent replication. In: Proceedings of the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, pp. 263–278. ACM (2015)

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Alan Fekete, Alexandra Meliou, Alvin Cheung, Anthony Tan, Cristina Teodoropol, Peter Alvaro and Peter Bailis, for fruitful discussion and feedback. This research is supported in part by DHS Award HSHQDC-16-3-00083, NSF CISE Expeditions Award CCF-1139158 and gifts from Alibaba, Amazon Web Services, Ant Financial, CapitalOne, Ericsson, GE, Google, Huawei, Intel, IBM, Microsoft, Scotiabank, Splunk and VMware.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UC Berkeley, Berkeley, USA

    Michael Whittaker & Joseph M. Hellerstein

Authors
  1. Michael Whittaker
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

  2. Joseph M. Hellerstein
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Whittaker.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Whittaker, M., Hellerstein, J.M. Interactive checks for coordination avoidance. The VLDB Journal 30, 71–92 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-020-00628-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Revised:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00778-020-00628-3

Keywords