General design of grid-based data replication schemes using graphs and a few rules

Grid-based data replication protocols have been proven to be extremely efficient due to the high availability and the low cost of read and write operations they offer. However, although each grid protocol uses logical grids, the semantics and interpreting algorithms vary from scheme to scheme. This has the disadvantage that switching from one protocol to another, results in a re-implementation of the new protocol. By designing a general framework which separates the policy from the mechanism this drawback can be overcome. The purpose of this paper is to present such a general framework for grid-based protocols. We show how to model various popular grid protocols as instances of the framework, thereby demonstrating that grid-based protocols which look quite different at first glance share a common concept of construction. Additionally, we explain how new grid-based protocols with particular properties can be designed by using the framework in a graphical way