Distributed Systems Theory

I've received email from people who asked about the commit and consensus protocols (Paxos, 3PC etc.) mentioned in the previous post. I was going to write up something, but then I ran across a very good overview by Mark McKeown which provides A brief history of Consensus, 2PC and Transaction Commit.

This short writeup provides links to the most important papers like the Fischer, Lynch, and Paterson (FLP) Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process, Jim Gray (who, unfortunately, was lost at see earlier this year), and Leslie Lapmort's Consensus on Transaction Commit. In addition to Mark's post and all the papers there you may want to check out the presentation Jim and Leslie made on paxos commits.

If on the other hand, you already know all this (and a little more) then check out Werner Vogel's (Amazon's CTO) blog as there's an interesting job opening for you there.

Posted by Arnon Rotem-Gal-Oz at 06:20 PM  Permalink