Högskolan i Skövde

In a distributed database system, pessimistic concurrency control is often used to ensure consistency which implies that the execution time of a transaction is not predictable. The execution time of a transaction is not dependent on the local transactions only, but on every transaction in the system.

In real-time database systems it is important that transactions are predictable. One way to make transactions predictable is to use eventual consistency where transactions commit locally before they are propagated to other nodes in the system. It is then possible to get predictable transactions due to the fact that the execution time of the transaction only depends on concurrent transactions on the local node and not on delays on other nodes and delays from a network.

In this report an investigation is made on how a replication protocol using eventual consistency can be designed for, and implemented in, DeeDS, a distributed real-time database prototype. The protocol consists of three parts: a propagation method, a conflict detection algorithm, and a conflict resolution mechanism. The conflict detection algorithm is based on version vectors. The focus is on the propagation mechanism and the conflict detection algorithm of the replication protocol.

An implementation design of the replication protocol is made. A discussion on how the version vectors may be applied in terms of granularity (container, page, object or attribute) and how the log filter should be designed and implemented to suit the particular conflict detection algorithm is carried out. A number of test cases with focus on regression testing have been defined.

It is concluded that the feasibility of the conflict detection algorithm is dependent on the application type that uses DeeDS.