Integrity dangers in certification-based replication protocols

Abstract

Database replication protocols check read-write and/or writewrite conflicts. If there are none, protocols propagate transactions to the database, assuming theywill eventually commit.But commitmentmay fail due to integrity constraints violations. Also, the read actions of integrity checking may give raise to new conflicts. Thus, some more care must be taken if, in addition to the consistency of transactions and replicas, also the consistency of integrity constraints is to be maintained. In this paper, we investigate howcertification-based replication protocols can be adapted to correctly and transparently deal with the built-in integrity support provided by the underlying DBMS. Also, we experimentally demonstrate the negative effects that an incorrect management of integrity constraints causes in a database replication distributed system.