A framework for viewing atomic events in distributed computations

Abstract

We present a unifying framework for expressing and analyzing events at various levels of atomicity in distributed computations. In the framework, events at any level of atornicity are defined and composed in terms of events at a finer level of atomicity using hierarchical views. We identify and prove two properties that are satisfied by each level of atomicity. Results based on these properties that hold for any one level of atomicity apply to all levels of atomicity.