Department of Computer Science

Distributed Commit Protocols: Interactive Simulation, Verification and Behavioural Analysis

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Project Overview

In transaction processing, it is not uncommon for a `typical' transaction to spend a third of its life in the commit phase, awaiting the completion of a commit protocol. These protocols ensure that the changes requested by the transaction can be made on all servers, despite processor and network failures that might occur as the protocol proceeds.

As many companies move towards electronic commerce and mobile computing as their way of doing business, this proportion of time spent during the commit phase could rise dramatically. With existing protocols, an enterprise's database could even be blocked by a fault on another enterprise's database server.

Using advanced techniques from interactive, discrete-event simulation and process algebra, we intend to build a simulation environment that will facilitate the behavioural analysis of distributed commit protocols under various assumptions about failure scenarios.

The beneficiaries of the project are likely to be companies considering transaction processing via electronic commerce and mobile computing will be able to obtain a clearer understanding of the performance impact on transaction throughput and reposnse time.

The interactive simulation package will allow practitioners and researchers to gain a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of distributed commit protocols in terms of their abiility to survive failure sequences.

System designers will be able to assess the advantages and disadvantages of different commit protocols in products that they are considering for acquisition.

OBJECTIVES

The stated objectives of the project are as follows.

Members


FUNDING

EPSRC funding for three years, starting August, 1997.
Peter Thanisch, queries to <csg@dcs.ed.ac.uk>, last change 6/5/97