Eventual consistency: origin and support

Eventual consistency is demanded nowadays in geo-replicated services that need to be highly scalable and available. According to the CAP constraints, when network partitions may arise, a distributed service should choose between being strongly consistent or being highly available. Since scalable ser...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Muñoz Escoí, Francesc D., García Escrivá, José Ramón, Sendra Roig, Juan Salvador, Bernabéu Aubán, José M., González de Mendívil Moreno, José Ramón
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2018
País:España
Institución:Universidad Pública de Navarra
Repositorio:Academica-e. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad Pública de Navarra
OAI Identifier:oai:academica-e.unavarra.es:2454/35277
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2454/35277
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Eventual consistency
Consistency model
CAP theorem
Data replication
Descripción
Sumario:Eventual consistency is demanded nowadays in geo-replicated services that need to be highly scalable and available. According to the CAP constraints, when network partitions may arise, a distributed service should choose between being strongly consistent or being highly available. Since scalable services should be available, a relaxed consistency (while the network is partitioned) is the preferred choice. Eventual consistency is not a common data-centric consistency model, but only a state convergence condition to be added to a relaxed consistency model. There are still several aspects of eventual consistency that have not been analysed in depth in previous works: 1. which are the oldest replication proposals providing eventual consistency, 2. which replica consistency models provide the best basis for building eventually consistent services, 3. which mechanisms should be considered for implementing an eventually consistent service, and 4. which are the best combinations of those mechanisms for achieving different concrete goals. This paper provides some notes on these important topics.