CONDUCTOR: a model for reliable interprocess communication

The authors introduce a model for reliable interprocess communication based on an extension of the gentleman administrator model. The architecture of the CONDUCTOR model provides increased concurrency and a simplified user view of a distributed system. The increased concurrency stems from the potential for multiple instances of administrators to coexist within administrator groups. Users communicate directly with a conductor process instead of a variety of administrators. The new model provides an abstraction which hides administrators needed to service user requests. This form of multiprocess structuring is in keeping with the philosophy of the original Thoth system. A basis for reliable communication between administrator groups and the conductor process is presented. Reliable communication in this model is provided by enforcing atomicity of message delivery and ordering of messages. The architecture of the CONDUCTOR model is robust inasmuch as it is process failure tolerant. A mechanism for detecting and replacing failed administrators of a failed conductor using N. Natarjan's (1988) watchdog processes is presented.<<ETX>>

[1]  W. E. Burr.  A fault-tolerant hierarchical broadcast network , 1984 .

[2]  K. Ravindran,et al.  State Inconsistency Issues in Local Area Network-Based Distributed Kernels , 1986, Symposium on Reliability in Distributed Software and Database Systems.

[3]  Butler W. Lampson,et al.  Atomic Transactions , 1980, Advanced Course: Distributed Systems.

[4]  Jo-Mei Chang,et al.  Reliable broadcast protocols , 1984, TOCS.

[5]  Richard D. Schlichting,et al.  Fault-Tolerant Broadcasts , 1984, Sci. Comput. Program..

[6]  Samuel T. Chanson,et al.  Reliable group communication in distributed systems , 1988, [1988] Proceedings. The 8th International Conference on Distributed.

[7]  Amr El Abbadi,et al.  Implementing Fault-Tolerant Distributed Objects , 1985, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[8]  Shmuel Katz,et al.  What processes know: Definitions and proof methods , 1986, PODC '86.

[9]  Hector Garcia-Molina,et al.  Message ordering in a multicast environment , 1989, [1989] Proceedings. The 9th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.

[10]  W. Morven Gentleman,et al.  Message passing between sequential processes: The reply primitive and the administrator concept , 1981, Softw. Pract. Exp..

[11]  Gul A. Agha,et al.  ACTORS - a model of concurrent computation in distributed systems , 1985, MIT Press series in artificial intelligence.

[12]  S. T. Chanson,et al.  Failure Transparency in Remote Procedure Calls , 1989, IEEE Trans. Computers.

[13]  K. K. Ramakrishnan,et al.  Reliable client-server communication in distributed programs , 1989, [1989] Proceedings. 14th Conference on Local Computer Networks.

[14]  Willy Zwaenepoel,et al.  Distributed process groups in the V Kernel , 1985, TOCS.

[15]  David R. Cheriton,et al.  Thoth, a portable real-time operating system , 1979, CACM.

[16]  Barbara Liskov,et al.  Guardians and Actions: Linguistic Support for Robust, Distributed Programs , 1983, TOPL.

[17]  Henri E. Bal,et al.  An efficient reliable broadcast protocol , 1989, OPSR.

[18]  John A. Stankovic,et al.  A Perspective on Distributed Computer Systems , 1984, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[19]  David Ross Cheriton.  Multi-process Structuring and the THOTH Operating System , 1978 .

[20]  Kenneth P. Birman,et al.  Reliable communication in the presence of failures , 1987, TOCS.

[21]  Alfred Z. Spector,et al.  Distributed logging for transaction processing , 1987, SIGMOD '87.

[22]  Santosh K. Shrivastava.  Structuring Distributed Systems for Recoverability and Crash Resistance , 1981, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[23]  N. Natarajan,et al.  Communication and Synchronization Primitives for Distributed Programs , 1985, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering.

[24]  Richard D. Schlichting,et al.  Fail-stop processors: an approach to designing fault-tolerant computing systems , 1983, TOCS.

[25]  Elizabeth A. Unger,et al.  Logic of knowledge and belief in the design of a distributed integrity kernel , 1990, Proceedings. PARBASE-90: International Conference on Databases, Parallel Architectures, and Their Applications.

[26]  David L. Presotto,et al.  Publishing: a reliable broadcast communication mechanism , 1983, SOSP '83.