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Encyclopedia of Database Systems pp 582–584Cite as

Consistency Models for Replicated Data

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Synonyms

Memory consistency; Replica consistency

Definition

When a distributed database system keeps several copies or replicas for a data item, at different sites, then the system may ensure that the copies are always consistent (that is, they have the same value), or the system may allow temporary discrepancy between the copies. Even if the copies are not the same, the algorithms that manage the data may be able to hide the discrepancies from clients. A consistency model defines the extent to which discrepancies can exist or be observed, between the copies. If the system offers a strong consistency model, then clients will not be aware of the fact that the system has replicated data, while a weak consistency model requires more careful programming of the clients, so they can cope with the discrepancies they observe.

Historical Background

Most replication research in the 1970s aimed to provide the illusion of an unreplicated database offering serializability. In the early 1980s,...

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Recommended Reading

  1. Alonso R, Barbará D, Garcia-Molina H. Data caching issues in an information retrieval system. ACM Trans Database Syst. 1990;15(3):359–84.

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  2. Attar R, Bernstein PA, Goodman N. Site initialization, recovery, and backup in a distributed database system. IEEE Trans Softw Eng. 1984;10(6):645–50.

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  3. Demers AJ, Greene DH, Hauser C, Irish W, Larson J, Shenker S, Sturgis HE, Swinehart DC, Terry DB. Epidemic algorithms for replicated database maintenance. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS 6th Symposium on the Principles of Distributed Computing; 1987. p. 1–12.

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  4. Plattner C, Ganymed GA., Scalable replication for transactional web applications. In: Proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX 5th International Middleware Conference; 2004. p. 155–74.

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  5. Sheth AP, Rusinkiewicz M. Management of interdependent data: specifying dependency and consistency requirements. In: Proceedings of the Workshop on the Management of Replicated Data; 1990. p. 133–6.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Alan Fekete

Authors
  1. Alan Fekete
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Correspondence to Alan Fekete .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Ling Liu

  2. University of Waterloo School of Computer Science, Waterloo, ON, Canada

    M. Tamer Özsu

Section Editor information

  1. School of Computer Science, McGill Univ., Montreal, Quebec, Canada

    Bettina Kemme

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Fekete, A. (2018). Consistency Models for Replicated Data. In: Liu, L., Özsu, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8265-9_78

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