Article

Transactors: a programming model for maintaining globally consistent distributed state in unreliable environments

Authors:

Carlos A. VarelaAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '05: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 195 - 208

https://doi.org/10.1145/1040305.1040322

Published: 12 January 2005 Publication History

Abstract

We introduce transactors, a fault-tolerant programming model for composing loosely-coupled distributed components running in an unreliable environment such as the internet into systems that reliably maintain globally consistent distributed state. The transactor model incorporates certain elements of traditional transaction processing, but allows these elements to be composed in different ways without the need for central coordination, thus facilitating the study of distributed fault-tolerance from a semantic point of view. We formalize our approach via the τ-calculus, an extended lambda-calculus based on the actor model, and illustrate its usage through a number of examples. The τ-calculus incorporates constructs which distributed processes can use to create globally-consistent checkpoints. We provide an operational semantics for the τ-calculus, and formalize the following safety and liveness properties: first, we show that globally-consistent checkpoints have equivalent execution traces without any node failures or application-level failures, and second, we show that it is possible to reach globally-consistent checkpoints provided that there is some bounded failure-free interval during which checkpointing can occur.

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Transactors: a programming model for maintaining globally consistent distributed state in unreliable environments

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cover image ACM Conferences

POPL '05: Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

January 2005

402 pages

ISBN:158113830X

DOI:10.1145/1040305

General Chair:
Jens Palsberg
University of California, Los Angeles, CA
,
Program Chair:
Martín Abadi
University of California, Santa Cruz, CA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 40, Issue 1
Proceedings of the 32nd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
January 2005
391 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1047659
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2005 ACM.

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Published: 12 January 2005

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POPL05: The 32nd Annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages 2005

January 12 - 14, 2005

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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3605098.3636051
Vidal G(2024)From Reversible Computation to Checkpoint-Based Rollback Recovery for Message-Passing Concurrent ProgramsFormal Aspects of Component Software10.1007/978-3-031-52183-6_6(103-123)Online publication date: 13-Jan-2024
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52183-6_6
Cheeseman LParkinson MClebsch SKogias MDrossopoulou SChisnall DWrigstad TLiétar P(2023)When Concurrency Matters: Behaviour-Oriented ConcurrencyProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228527:OOPSLA2(1531-1560)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622852
Tardieu OGrove DBercea GCastro PCwiklik JEpstein E(2023)Reliable Actors with Retry OrchestrationProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912737:PLDI(1293-1316)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
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Paul SAgha GPatterson SVarela C(2022)Eventual consensus in Synod: verification using a failure-aware actor modelInnovations in Systems and Software Engineering10.1007/s11334-022-00463-519:4(395-410)Online publication date: 25-Jul-2022
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Cao ZLiu LWang J(2021)Intelligent Health Information Services Requirements Revisited from an Actor's Perspective2021 IEEE International Conference on Digital Health (ICDH)10.1109/ICDH52753.2021.00047(244-253)Online publication date: Sep-2021
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Francalanza AMezzina CTuosto E(2020)Towards Choreographic-Based MonitoringReversible Computation: Extending Horizons of Computing10.1007/978-3-030-47361-7_6(128-150)Online publication date: 12-May-2020
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Vassor MStefani J(2018)Checkpoint/Rollback vs Causally-Consistent ReversibilityReversible Computation10.1007/978-3-319-99498-7_20(286-303)Online publication date: 22-Aug-2018
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Francalanza AMezzina CTuosto E(2018)Reversible Choreographies via Monitoring in ErlangDistributed Applications and Interoperable Systems10.1007/978-3-319-93767-0_6(75-92)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2018
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Swalens JDe Koster JDe Meuter WJannesari ACastro PSato YMattson T(2017)Transactional actors: communication in transactionsProceedings of the 4th ACM SIGPLAN International Workshop on Software Engineering for Parallel Systems10.1145/3141865.3141866(31-41)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2017
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