Central-Server-Based Orphan Detection for Argus

摘要

One problem that can arise in a distributed computer system is that of orphans.These are computations that continue to execute even though their results are no longer needed. They can arise as a result of aborted transactions or node crashes. Orphans are bad because they waste resources and can see consistent data, causing a program to behave unpredictably. The Argus system makes use of an algorithm to detect and destroy orphans before they can cause harm. This scheme does not delay normal computations and avoids unnecessary communication between nodes. This is accomplished by piggybacking orphan detection information on normal system messages. The current version of this algorithm is impractical because of the large amount of information that must be included in all messages between nodes. (author). (KR)