a reliable object-oriented data repository for a distributed computer system
The repository described in this paper is a component of a distributed data storage system for a network of many autonomous machines that might run diverse applications. The repository is a server machine that provides very large, very reliable long-term storage for both private and shared data objects. The repository can handle both very small and very large data objects, and it supports atomic update of groups of objects that might be distributed over several repositories. Each object is represented as a history of its states; in the actual implementation, an object is a list of immutable versions. The core of the repository is stable append-only storage called Version Storage (VS). VS contains the histories of all data objects in the repository as well as all information needed for crash recovery. To maintain the current versions of objects online, a copying scheme was adopted that resembles techniques of real-time garbage collection. VS can be implemented with optical disks.
reliability object object-oriented data repositories distributed computation systems paper component distributed data storage system storage system storage network autonomic applications server sharing atomic update atom update group histories implementation version core informal crash recovery recovery maintainability online scheme real-time collect optical disk optic memory management stable storage