Revisiting 1-Copy equivalence in clustered databases

Recently renewed interest in scalable database systems for shared nothing clusters has been supported by replication protocols based on group communication that are aimed at seamlessly extending the native consistency criteria of centralized database management systems. By using a read-one/write-all-available approach and avoiding the fine-grained synchronization associated with traditional distributed locking, one needs just a single distributed interaction step for each update transaction. Therefore the system can easily be scaled to a large number of replicas, especially, with read intensive loads typical of Web server support environments.In this paper we point out that 1-copy equivalence for causal consistency, which is subsumed by both serializability and snapshot isolation criteria, depends on basic session guarantees that are costly to ensure in clusters, especially in a multi-tier environment. We then point out a simple solution that guarantees causal consistency in the Database State Machine protocol and evaluate its performance, thus highlighting the cost of seamlessly providing common consistency criteria of centralized databases in a clustered environment.(undefined

On the use of a reflective architecture to augment Database Management Systems

The Database Management System (DBMS) used to be a commodity software component, with well known standard interfaces and semantics. However, the performance and reliability expectations being placed on DBMSs have increased the demand for a variety add-ons, that augment the functionality of the database in a wide range of deployment scenarios, offering support for features such as clustering, replication, and selfmanagement, among others. The effectiveness of such extensions largely rests on closely matching the actual needs of applications, hence on a wide range of tradeoffs and configuration options out of the scope of traditional client interfaces. A well known software engineering approach to systems with such requirements is reflection. Unfortunately, standard reflective interfaces in DBMSs are very limited (for instance, they often do not support the desired range of atomicity guarantees in a distributed setting). Some of these limitations may be circumvented by implementing reflective features as a wrapper to the DBMS server. Unfortunately, this solutions comes at the expense of a large development effort and significant performance penalty. In this paper we propose a general purpose DBMS reflection architecture and interface, that supports multiple extensions while, at the same time, admitting efficient implementations. We illustrate the usefulness of our proposal with concrete examples, and evaluate its cost and performance under different implementation strategies

Effect of surface treatments of laboratory-fabricated composites on the microtensile bond strength to a luting resin cement

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the influence of different surface treatments on composite resin on the microtensile bond strength to a luting resin cement. Two laboratory composites for indirect restorations, Solidex and Targis, and a conventional composite, Filtek Z250, were tested. Forty-eight composite resin blocks (5.0 x 5.0 x 5.0mm) were incrementally manufactured, which were randomly divided into six groups, according to the surface treatments: 1- control, 600-grit SiC paper (C); 2- silane priming (SI); 3- sandblasting with 50 mm Al2O3 for 10s (SA); 4- etching with 10% hydrofluoric acid for 60 s (HF); 5- HF + SI; 6 - SA + SI. Composite blocks submitted to similar surface treatments were bonded together with the resin adhesive Single Bond and Rely X luting composite. A 500-g load was applied for 5 minutes and the samples were light-cured for 40s. The bonded blocks were serially sectioned into 3 slabs with 0.9mm of thickness perpendicularly to the bonded interface (n = 12). Slabs were trimmed to a dumbbell shape and tested in tension at 0.5mm/min. For all composites tested, the application of a silane primer after sandblasting provided the highest bond strength means.O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a influência de diferentes tratamentos de superfície na resistência de união de resinas compostas a um agente de fixação resinoso. Dois compósitos de laboratório, Solidex e Targis, e um compósito convencional, Filtek Z250, foram testados. Quarenta e oito blocos de resina composta (5.0 x 5.0 x 5.0mm) foram confeccionados através da técnica incremental, para cada compósito testado, e foram aleatoriamente divididos em 6 grupos. Os blocos foram submetidos a seis tratamentos de superfície: 1 - Controle, Lixa 600-SiC (C); 2 - Silanização (SI); 3 - Jateamento com Al2O3 50µm por 10 segundos (SA); 4 - Condicionamento com ácido fluorídrico por 60 segundos (HF); 5 - HF + SI; 6 - SA + SI. Blocos submetidos ao mesmo tratamento foram unidos com o agente de fixação resinoso Rely X. Uma carga de 500g foi aplicada por 5 minutos e as amostras foram fotoativadas por 40 segundos. Os blocos unidos foram seccionados em fatias de 0.9mm de espessura perpendicularmente à interface de união (n = 12). Foram realizadas constrições limitando a interface de união a 1mm e as amostras foram levadas para o ensaio de tração. As maiores médias de união foram obtidas para as amostras submetidas à aplicação do silano após o jateamento com Al2O3

A pragmatic protocol for database replication in interconnected clusters

Multi-master update everywhere database replication, as achieved by protocols based on group communication such as DBSM and Postgres-R, addresses both performance and availability. By scaling it to wide area networks, one could save costly bandwidth and avoid large round-trips to a distant master server. Also, by ensuring that updates are safely stored at a remote site within transaction boundaries, disaster recovery is guaranteed. Unfortunately, scaling existing cluster based replication protocols is troublesome. In this paper we present a database replication protocol based on group communication that targets interconnected clusters. In contrast with previous proposals, it uses a separate multicast group for each cluster and thus does not impose any additional requirements on group communication, easing implementation and deployment in a real setting. Nonetheless, the protocol ensures one-copy equivalence while allowing all sites to execute update transactions. Experimental evaluation using the workload of the industry standard TPC-C benchmark confirms the advantages of the approach

GORDA: an open architecture for database replication

Database replication has been a common feature in database management systems (DBMSs) for a long time. In particular, asynchronous or lazy propagation of updates provides a simple yet efficient way of increasing performance and data availability and is widely available across the DBMS product spectrum. High end systems additionally offer sophisticated conflict resolution and data propagation options as well as, synchronous replication based on distributed locking and two-phase commit protocols. This paper presents GORDA architecture and programming interface (GAPI), that enables different replication strategies to be implemented once and deployed in multiple DBMSs. This is achieved by proposing a reflective interface to transaction processing instead of relying on-client interfaces or ad-hoc server extensions. The proposed approach is thus cost-effective, in enabling reuse of replication protocols or components in multiple DBMSs, as well as potentially efficient, as it allows close coupling with DBMS internals.(undefined

Evaluating certification protocols in the partial database state machine

Partial replication is an alluring technique to ensure the reliability of very large and geographically distributed databases while, at the same time, offering good performance. By correctly exploiting access locality most transactions become confined to a small subset of the database replicas thus reducing processing, storage access and communication overhead associated with replication. The advantages of partial replication have however to be weighted against the added complexity that is required to manage it. In fact, if the chosen replica configuration prevents the local execution of transactions or if the overhead of consistency protocols offsets the savings of locality, potential gains cannot be realized. These issues are heavily dependent on the application used for evaluation and render simplistic benchmarks useless. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of Partial Database State Machine (PDBSM) replication by comparing alternative partial replication protocols with full replication. This is done using a realistic scenario based on a detailed network simulator and access patterns from an industry standard database benchmark. The results obtained allow us to identify the best configuration for typical on-line transaction processing applications.União Europeia - GORDA Project (FP6-IST/004758)

Group-based replication of on-line transaction processing servers

Several techniques for database replication using group communication have recently been proposed, namely, the Database State Machine, Postgres-R, and the NODO protocol. Although all rely on a totally ordered multicast for consistency, they differ substantially on how multicast is used. This results in different performance trade-offs which are hard to compare as each protocol is presented using a different load scenario and evaluation method. In this paper we evaluate the suitability of such protocols for replication of On-Line Transaction Processing (OLTP) applications in clusters of servers and over wide area networks. This is achieved by implementing them using a common infra-structure and by using a standard workload. The results allows us to select the best protocol regarding performance and scalability in a demanding but realistic usage scenario.Projecto STRONGRE (POSI/CHS/41285/2001) financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Testing the dependability and performance of group communication based database replication protocols

Database replication based on group communication systems has recently been proposed as an efficient and resilient solution for large-scale data management. However, its evaluation has been conducted either on simplistic simulation models, which fail to assess concrete implementations, or on complete system implementations which are costly to test with realistic large-scale scenarios. This paper presents a tool that combines implementations of replication and communication protocols under study with simulated network, database engine, and traffic generator models. Replication components can therefore be subjected to realistic large scale loads in a variety of scenarios, including fault-injection, while at the same time providing global observation and control. The paper shows first how the model is configured and validated to closely reproduce the behavior of a real system, and then how it is applied, allowing us to derive interesting conclusions both on replication and communication protocols and on their implementationsFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Project STRONGREP (POSI/CHS/41285/2001)