A low-cost atomic commit protocol

Abstract

The proposed coordinator log transaction execution protocol centralizes logging on a per-transaction basis and exploits piggybacking to provide the semantics of a distributed atomic commit without the associated costs. This protocol eliminates two rounds of messages (one phase) from the presumed commit protocol and dramatically reduces the number of log forces needed for distributed atomic commit. The authors compare the coordinator log transaction execution protocol with existing protocols, describe when it is desirable, and discuss how it affects the write-ahead log protocol and the database crash recovery algorithm.