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Data Consistency in Transactional Storage Systems: A Centralised Semantics

Authors Shale Xiong, Andrea Cerone, Azalea Raad, Philippa Gardner

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Operational semantics
Keywords
  • Operational Semantics
  • Consistency Models
  • Transactions
  • Distributed Key-value Stores

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Abstract

We introduce an interleaving operational semantics for describing the client-observable behaviour of atomic transactions on distributed key-value stores. Our semantics builds on abstract states comprising centralised, global key-value stores and partial client views. Using our abstract states, we present operational definitions of well-known consistency models in the literature, and prove them to be equivalent to their existing declarative definitions using abstract executions. We explore two applications of our operational framework:  
1) verifying that the COPS replicated database and the Clock-SI partitioned database satisfy their consistency models using trace refinement, and 
2) proving invariant properties of client programs.

Cite As Get BibTex

Shale Xiong, Andrea Cerone, Azalea Raad, and Philippa Gardner. Data Consistency in Transactional Storage Systems: A Centralised Semantics. In 34th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2020). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 166, pp. 21:1-21:31, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2020) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2020.21

Author Details

Shale Xiong
  • Department of Computing, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Andrea Cerone
  • Department of Computing, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
Azalea Raad
  • MPI-SWS, Kaiserslautern, Germany
Philippa Gardner
  • Department of Computing, Imperial College London, United Kingdom

Funding

  • Xiong, Shale: The Department of Computing, Imperial College London, and EPSRC Fellowship VeTSpec: Verified Trustworthy Software Specification (EP/R034567/1)
  • Cerone, Andrea: EPSRC Programme Grant REMS: Rigorous Engineering for Mainstream Systems (EP/K008528/1), and EPSRC Fellowship VeTSpec: Verified Trustworthy Software Specification (EP/R034567/1)
  • Raad, Azalea: ERC Horizon 2020 Consolidator Grant "RustBelt" (grant agreement no. 683289)
  • Gardner, Philippa: EPSRC Programme Grant REMS: Rigorous Engineering for Mainstream Systems (EP/K008528/1), and EPSRC Fellowship VeTSpec: Verified Trustworthy Software Specification (EP/R034567/1)

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