The compositional approach to sequential consistency and lazy caching

Summary.

The lazy caching protocol proposed by Afek, Brown and Merritt [ABM93], is explained and formally proven correct by means of compositional methods. The protocol is decomposed into four simple protocols, which are of interest on their own. A top level proof is given that is to a large extent independent of the particular model used for the more detailed proofs and allows for a number of generalizations of the original lazy caching protocol. Detailed proofs of safety and liveness properties are given using CSP and trace logic.