CSR: Small: Protocols and Languages for Low-Coordination Consistent Geodistributed Transactions

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The world now runs on applications that operate at global scale, available everywhere. The information that these applications use must also be distributed around the globe so it is close to application users. However, keeping this geo-distributed information in sync is a major challenge for application developers. They must choose between building software in a way that is slow but correct or fast but error-prone. This project aims to make it easier for developers to build reliable, high-performance distributed applications. Developers will be able to write code in a manner similar to the way they would when using a database that offers simple reasoning and strong guarantees, but the project will introduce new software architectures and tools that improve performance. The project will demonstrate using real software that its innovations are effective in practice. This project aims for broad impact on the reliability and performance of distributed software. Its success will enable a larger class of developers to build distributed software systems with rich functionality and tight integration. Currently such systems require expert engineers and can be undertaken only by a few large software companies. Democratizing construction of distributed systems will empower a wide range of developers at government agencies, health care and nonprofit organizations, and medium-sized businesses. The project will release software artifacts embodying the technical advances and will demonstrate their use to build real software. Developed software will be publicly available at the project home page, www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/proteus, useful not only to researchers but also to developers.