Issue No. 02 - March/April (1999 vol. 25)
ISSN: 0098-5589
pp: 274-281
ABSTRACT
<p><b>Abstract</b>—A <it>global checkpoint</it> is a set of local checkpoints, one per process. The traditional <it>consistency</it> criterion for global checkpoints states that a global checkpoint is consistent if it does not include messages received and not sent. This paper investigates other consistency criteria, <it>transitlessness</it>, and <it>strong consistency</it>. A global checkpoint is transitless if it does not exhibit messages sent and not received. Transitlessness can be seen as a dual of traditional consistency. Strong consistency is the addition of transitlessness to traditional consistency. The main result of this paper is a statement of the necessary and sufficient condition answering the following question: "<it>Given an arbitrary set of local checkpoints, can this set be extended to a global checkpoint that satisfies</it><tmath>$\cal P$</tmath>" (where <tmath>$\cal P$</tmath> is traditional consistency, transitlessness, or strong consistency). From a practical point of view, this condition, when applied to transitlessness, is particularly interesting as it helps characterize which messages do not need to be recorded by checkpointing protocols.</p>
INDEX TERMS
Checkpointing, consistency, strong consistency, transitlessness, distributed systems, fault-tolerance, rollback recovery.
CITATION

R. H. Netzer, M. Raynal and J. Hélary, "Consistency Issues in Distributed Checkpoints," in IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, vol. 25, no. , pp. 274-281, 1999.
doi:10.1109/32.761450