An online algorithm for dimension-bound analysis

Abstract

The vector-clock size necessary to characterize causality in a distributed computation is bounded by the dimension of the partial order induced by that computation. In theory the dimension can be as large as the number of processes in the computation, but in practice it is much smaller. We present an online algorithm to compute the dimension of a distributed computation. This algorithm requires the computation of the critical pairs of the partial order followed by the creation of extensions of the partial order. This is our next step toward the goal of creating an online vector clock whose size is bounded by the dimension of a distributed computation, not by the number of processes. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1999.