07/01/1992 09:00 AM
Computer Engineering
Services provided on wide-area networks like the Internet present several challenges. The reliability, performance, and scalability expected of such services often requires they be implemented using multiple, replicated servers. One possible architecture implements the replicas as a {\\em weak-consistency process group.} This architecture provides good scalability and availability, handles portable computer systems, and minimizes the effect of users on each other. The key principles in this architecture are component independence, a process group protocol that provides small summaries of database contents, caching database {\\em slices}, and the {\\em quorum multicast} client-to-server communication protocol. A distributed bibliographic database system serves as an example.
