A protocol description language for customizing failure semantics

Abstract

To optimize performance in a fault-tolerant distributed system, it is often necessary to enforce different failure semantics for different components. By choosing a custom set of failure semantics for each component and then by enforcing the semantics with a minimal set of protocols for a particular architecture, performance may be maximized while ensuring the desired system behavior. We have developed DIL, a language for specifying, on a per-component basis, protocols that transparently enforce failure semantics. These protocols may be reused with arbitrary components, allowing the development of a library of protocols.< <ETX xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">&gt;</ETX>