From object replication to database replication

Abstract

This chapter reviews past research on database replication based on group communication. It initially recalls consistency criteria for object replication, compares them to serializability, a typical consistency criterion for databases, and presents a functional model to reason about replication protocols in general. Within this framework, deferred update replication is explained. We consider two instances of deferred update replication, one relying on atomic commit and the other relying on atomic broadcast. In this context, we show how group communication can simplify the design of database replication protocols and improve their availability and performance by reducing the abort rate. © 2010 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.