Reducing transaction abort rates with prioritized atomic multicast protocols

Abstract

Priority atomic multicast is a total-order multicast message delivery service that enables applications to prioritize the sequence by which messages are delivered, while regular total order properties remain invariant. Priority-based message delivery can serve to reduce the abortion rate of transactions. In this study, we compare three classical total order protocols against their corresponding prioritized versions, in the framework of a replication middleware. To this end, we use a test application that broadcasts prioritized messages by these protocols, and measure the effect of the priorization. We show that, under certain conditions, the use of prioritized protocols yields lower abort rates than the corresponding non-prioritized protocols. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.