Efficient communication of commitment-dependency information in the programmer-transparent coordination (PTC) scheme for cooperative recovery

The programmer-transparent coordination (PTC) scheme is an approach that facilitates efficient cooperative backward recovery from errors caused by software faults and latent hardware faults in distributed computer systems. The efficiency of handling the information on commitment-dependency is a major factor that determines the overhead incurred by the PTC scheme. The authors establish a principle on efficient identification and internode communication of the dynamically changing commitment-dependency among the distributed processes. Previously the principle of representing and communicating the commitment-dependency information in the form called the direct potential recaller set (DPRS) descriptor was established. It is shown that it is sufficient to maintain and communicate a part of the DPRS descriptor called the primary direct potential recaller set descriptor. This could mean substantial reductions in time and storage overhead associated with the PTC scheme in many applications