Group communication specifications: a comprehensive study

  • Authors:
  • Gregory V. Chockler;Idit Keidar;Roman Vitenberg

  • Affiliations:
  • The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Computer Science Institute;MIT Laboratory for Computer Science;The Technion Department of Computer Science

  • Venue:
  • ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
  • Year:
  • 2001

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Abstract

View-oriented group communication is an important and widely usedbuilding block for many distributed applications. Much currentresearch has been dedicated to specifying the semantics andservices of view-oriented group communication systems (GCSs).However, the guarantees of different GCSs are formulated usingvarying terminologies and modeling techniques, and thespecifications vary in their rigor. This makes it difficult toanalyze and compare the different systems. This survey provides acomprehensive set of clear and rigorous specifications, which maybe combined to represent the guarantees of most existing GCSs. Inthe light of these specifications, over 30 published GCSspecifications are surveyed. Thus, the specifications serve as aunifying framework for the classification, analysis, and comparisonof group communication systems. The survey also discusses over adozen different applications of group communication systems,shedding light on the usefulness of the presented specifications.This survey is aimed at both system builders and theoreticalresearchers. The specification framework presented in this articlewill help builders of group communication systems understand andspecify their service semantics; the extensive survey will allowthem to compare their service to others. Application builders willfind a guide here to the services provided by a large variety ofGCSs, which could help them choose the GCS appropriate for theirneeds. The formal framework may provide a basis for interestingtheoretical work, for example, analyzing relative strengths ofdifferent properties and the costs of implementing them.