A fault tolerant abstraction for transparent distributed programming

Abstract

This paper introduces a network fault model for distributed applications developed with the Mozart programming platform. First, it describes the fault model currently offered by Mozart, and the issues that make this model inconvenient for building fault-tolerant applications. Second, it introduces a novel fault model that addresses these issues. This model is based on a localization operation for distributed entities, and on an event-based mechanism to manage network faults. We claim that this model 1) is much better than the current one in all aspects, and 2) simplifies the development of fault-tolerant distributed applications by making the fault-tolerant aspect (largely) separate from the application logic. A prototype of this model has been developed on the existing Mozart platform. This prototype has been used on real applications to validate the aforementioned claims. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.