Distributed Computing
The synthesis of digital machines with provable epistemic properties
Proceedings of the 1986 Conference on Theoretical aspects of reasoning about knowledge
A knowledge-theoretic analysis of atomic commitment protocols
PODS '87 Proceedings of the sixth ACM SIGACT-SIGMOD-SIGART symposium on Principles of database systems
PODC '87 Proceedings of the sixth annual ACM Symposium on Principles of distributed computing
Effects of message loss on the termination of distributed protocols
Information Processing Letters
Knowledge and common knowledge in a distributed environment
Journal of the ACM (JACM)
A characterization of eventual Byzantine agreement
PODC '90 Proceedings of the ninth annual ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing
Knowledge and common knowledge in a byzantine environment: crash failures
Information and Computation
Using knowledge to optimally achieve coordination is distributed systems
TARK '92 Proceedings of the fourth conference on Theoretical aspects of reasoning about knowledge
A formal model of knowledge, action, and communication in distributed systems: preliminary report
Proceedings of the fourth annual ACM symposium on Principles of distributed computing
Incentive Constraints and Optimal Communication Systems
Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about Knowledge
A Link Between Knowledge and Communication in Faulty Distributed Systems
Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Reasoning about Knowledge
Notes on Data Base Operating Systems
Operating Systems, An Advanced Course
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
The subtle interaction between knowledge, action, and communication is an important theme underlying much of the literature on reasoning about knowledge in a variety of disciplines. The purpose of this paper is to review work on the relationship between knowledge and communication in distributed systems. Communication is the basic means by which knowledge is obtained and transferred in a distributed system. As a result, properties of the communication medium play a central role in determining what states of knowledge can result from communication. Most of this paper is a review of theorems that illustrate this connection and a discussion of their implications. In the latter part of this paper, we consider knowledge-oriented programming, a novel approach to describing agents' behavior in a distributed system. Knowledge-oriented programs are an extension of the knowledge-based protocols of Halpern and Fagin, in which communication is abstracted away completely from the description of agents' behavior. In its stead, agents can perform high level actions that are defined in terms of changing the state of knowledge of other agents. Such actions are called knowledge-oriented actions. Communication then enters when we come to implement the knowledge-oriented actions in a given context. Knowledge-oriented programming makes explicit use of the fact that the role of communication is to change the state of knowledge of agents in the system.