{"id":164505,"date":"2013-03-01T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/msr-research-item\/understanding-eventual-consistency\/"},"modified":"2018-10-16T20:33:53","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T03:33:53","slug":"understanding-eventual-consistency","status":"publish","type":"msr-research-item","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/publication\/understanding-eventual-consistency\/","title":{"rendered":"Understanding Eventual Consistency"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"asset-content\">\n<p>Modern geo-replicated databases underlying large-scale Internet services guarantee immediate availability and tolerate network partitions at the expense of providing only weak forms of consistency, commonly dubbed eventual consistency. At the moment there is a lot of confusion about the semantics of eventual consistency, as different systems implement it with different sets of features and in subtly different forms, stated either informally or using disparate and low-level formalisms.<br \/>\nWe address this problem by proposing a framework for formal and declarative specification of the semantics of eventually consistent systems using axioms. Our framework is fully customizable: by varying the set of axioms, we can rigorously define the semantics of systems that combine any subset of typical guarantees or features, including conflict resolution policies, session guarantees, causality guarantees, multiple consistency levels and transactions. We prove that our specifications are validated by an example abstract implementation, based on algorithms used in real-world systems. These  results demonstrate that our framework provides system architects with a tool for exploring the design space, and lays the foundation for formal reasoning about eventually consistent systems.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .asset-content --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Modern geo-replicated databases underlying large-scale Internet services guarantee immediate availability and tolerate network partitions at the expense of providing only weak forms of consistency, commonly dubbed eventual consistency. At the moment there is a lot of confusion about the semantics of eventual consistency, as different systems implement it with different sets of features and in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","footnotes":""},"msr-content-type":[3],"msr-research-highlight":[],"research-area":[13560],"msr-publication-type":[193718],"msr-product-type":[],"msr-focus-area":[],"msr-platform":[],"msr-download-source":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"msr-field-of-study":[],"msr-conference":[],"msr-journal":[],"msr-impact-theme":[],"msr-pillar":[],"class_list":["post-164505","msr-research-item","type-msr-research-item","status-publish","hentry","msr-research-area-programming-languages-software-engineering","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_publishername":"","msr_edition":"","msr_affiliation":"","msr_published_date":"2013-03-01","msr_host":"","msr_duration":"","msr_version":"","msr_speaker":"","msr_other_contributors":"","msr_booktitle":"","msr_pages_string":"","msr_chapter":"","msr_isbn":"","msr_journal":"","msr_volume":"","msr_number":"MSR-TR-2013-39","msr_editors":"","msr_series":"","msr_issue":"","msr_organization":"","msr_how_published":"","msr_notes":"This document is work in progress. Feel free to cite, but note that we will update the contents without warning (the first page contains a timestamp), and that we are likely going to publish the content in some future venue, at which point we will update this paragraph.","msr_highlight_text":"","msr_release_tracker_id":"","msr_original_fields_of_study":"","msr_download_urls":"","msr_external_url":"","msr_secondary_video_url":"","msr_longbiography":"","msr_microsoftintellectualproperty":1,"msr_main_download":"205572","msr_publicationurl":"","msr_doi":"","msr_publication_uploader":[{"type":"file","title":"distrmm-long-3-25-13.pdf","viewUrl":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/distrmm-long-3-25-13.pdf","id":205572,"label_id":0}],"msr_related_uploader":"","msr_attachments":[{"id":205572,"url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/distrmm-long-3-25-13.pdf"}],"msr-author-ordering":[{"type":"user_nicename","value":"sburckha","user_id":33544,"rest_url":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/microsoft-research\/v1\/researchers?person=sburckha"},{"type":"text","value":"Alexey Gotsman","user_id":0,"rest_url":false},{"type":"text","value":"Hongseok Yang","user_id":0,"rest_url":false}],"msr_impact_theme":[],"msr_research_lab":[],"msr_event":[],"msr_group":[],"msr_project":[170557],"publication":[],"video":[],"download":[],"msr_publication_type":"techreport","related_content":{"projects":[{"ID":170557,"post_title":"Concurrent Revisions","post_name":"concurrent-revisions","post_type":"msr-project","post_date":"2010-09-15 15:02:07","post_modified":"2017-06-06 09:38:46","post_status":"publish","permalink":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/project\/concurrent-revisions\/","post_excerpt":"The Revisions project introduces a novel programming model for concurrent, parallel, and distributed applications. It provides programmers with a simple, yet powerful and efficient mechanism (based on mutable snapshots and deterministic conflict resolution) to execute various application tasks in parallel even if those tasks access the same data and may exhibit read-write or write-write conflicts. To find out more about the basic idea and how it works: Read our OOPSLA 2010\u00a0paper (links for all publications&hellip;","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-project\/170557"}]}}]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/164505"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-research-item"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/164505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":528664,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-item\/164505\/revisions\/528664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-content-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-content-type?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-highlight","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-research-highlight?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-publication-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-publication-type?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-product-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-product-type?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-focus-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-focus-area?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-platform","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-platform?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-download-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-download-source?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-field-of-study","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-field-of-study?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-conference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-conference?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-journal","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-journal?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-impact-theme","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-impact-theme?post=164505"},{"taxonomy":"msr-pillar","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-pillar?post=164505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}