Elsevier

Information Sciences

Volume 65, Issues 1–2, 1 November 1992, Pages 173-187
Information Sciences

On the design of replicated databases

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Abstract

Providing data availability is a prime consideration in database systems. Replication is a natural paradigm to increase the data availability in distributed databases. In this paper we focus on how to allocate the copies of a replicated database system to increase its fault tolerance. Our discussion is based on two intuitively appealing notions of availability, the group and the update availability requirement. Whereas the group represents the highest level of availability for read-only transactions, the update availability requirement is a very appealing notion of availability for update transactions. Both positive and negative results are reported. We show that there is no replica control algorithm that meets both requirements simultaneously and discuss the limitations of voting strategies in realizing groups. We demonstrate how data replication can be performed to provide significant improvements in fault tolerance. Algorithmic aspects of this issue are discussed.

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