Dynamic voting algorithms for maintaining the consistency of a replicated database

There are several replica control algorithms for managing replicated files in the face of network partitioning due to site or communication link failures. Pessimistic algorithms ensure consistency at the price of reduced availability; they permit at most one (distinguished) partition to process updates at any given time. The best known pessimistic algorithm, voting, is a “static” algorithm, meaning that all potential distinguished partitions can be listed in advance. We present a dynamic extension of voting called dynamic voting. This algorithm permits updates in a partition provided it contains more than half of the up-to-date copies of the replicated file. We also present an extension of dynamic voting called dynamic voting with linearly ordered copies (abbreviated as dynamic-linear). These algorithms are dynamic because the order in which past distinguished partitions were created plays a role in the selection of the next distinguished partition. Our algorithms have all the virtues of ordinary voting, including its simplicity, and provide improved availability as well. We provide two stochastic models to support the latter claim. In the first (site) model, sites may fail but communication links are infallible; in the second (link) model the reverse is true. We prove that under the site model, dynamic-linear has greater availability than any static algorithm, including weighted voting, if there are four or more sites in the network. In the link model, we consider all biconnected five-site networks and a wide variety of failure and repair rates. In all cases considered, dynamic-linear had greater availability than any static algorithm.