Computation and communication in R*

Abstract

This article presents and discusses the computation and communication model used by R*, a prototype distributed database management system. An R* computation consists of a tree of processes connected by virtual circuit communication paths. The process management and communication protocols used by R* enable the system to provide reliable, distributed transactions while maintaining adequate levels of performance. Of particular interest is the use of processes in R* to retain user context from one transaction to another, in order to improve the system performance and recovery characteristics.