Before Recitation
Read “It’s Time To Move On From Two Phase Commit”, by Daniel Abadi. This is a somewhat unusual reading, as it is a (technical) blog post, not a published paper. It describes several problems with two-phase commit, and then points out that if we could build a system that didn't need to abort, these problems would go away. It goes on to discuss some of Abadi's recent work on building systems that will never need to abort.
As you read the paper, think about the following questions
- Why do systems need to generate aborts? (Hint: think about the paper we read in the previous recitation, or the two-phase locking protocol.)
- Can you think of any downsides to the deterministic approach Abadi advocates? Does he describe any of these downsides?
Question for Recitation: Before you come to this recitation, you'll turn in a brief answer to the following questions (really—we don't need more than a sentence or so for each question).
Your answers to these questions should be in your own words, not direct quotations from the paper.
- Do you think the problems with two-phase commit Abadi points out are significant?
- Why do you think the author wrote this blog post?
During Recitation
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