Diagonal replication on grid for efficient access of data in distributed database systems

Abstract

Data Replication can be used to improve data availability in distributed database environments. In such a system, a mechanism is required to maintain the consistency of the replicated data. Grid structure technique based on quorum is one of the solutions for performing this while providing a high data availability of the system. It was shown in the previous study that, it still requires a bigger number of copies be made available to construct a quorum. So it is not suitable for the large systems. In this paper, we propose a technique called diagonal replication on grid (DRG) technique where a data will be replicated in a diagonal manner in a logical grid structure. In comparison to the Grid structure technique, DRG requires lower communication cost for an operation, while providing higher read/write availability, which is preferred for large distributed database systems. © Springer-Verlag 2004.