Putting Order in Strong Eventual Consistency

Kevin de Porre (1) , Florian Myter (1) , Christophe de Troyer (1) , Christophe Scholliers (2) , Wolfgang de Meuter (1) , Elisa Gonzalez Boix (1)

1 VUB - Vrije Universiteit Brussel [Bruxelles]
2 UGENT - Universiteit Gent = Ghent University

Conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs) aid programmers develop highly available and scalable distributed systems. However, the literature describes only a limited portfolio of conflict-free data types and implementing custom ones requires additional knowledge of replication and consistency techniques. As a result, programmers resort to ad hoc solutions which are error-prone and result in brittle systems. In this paper, we introduce strong eventually consistent replicated objects (SECROs), a general-purpose data type for building available data structures that guarantee strong eventual consistency (SEC) without restrictions on the operations. To evaluate our solution we compare a real-time collaborative text editor built atop SECROs with a state-of-the-art implementation that uses JSON CRDTs. This comparison quantifies various performance aspects. The results show that SECROs are truly general-purpose and memory efficient.

Mots clés: Distribution; Eventual consistency; Replicated data types

Domaines: Informatique [cs]; Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Kevin de Porre, Florian Myter, Christophe de Troyer, Christophe Scholliers, Wolfgang de Meuter, et al.. Putting Order in Strong Eventual Consistency. 19th IFIP International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS), Jun 2019, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. pp.36-56, ⟨10.1007/978-3-030-22496-7_3⟩. ⟨hal-02319575⟩