Asymmetric Quorum Protocol for Distributed Database Consistency
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing distributed transactional databases face challenges in maintaining consistency and elasticity due to network failures and the difficulty of adding or removing participants without impacting fault tolerance, particularly in enforcing transactional consistency and atomicity.
Innovation Solution
The asymmetric quorum protocol allows participants to operate as primary or secondary participants, where primary participants decide on transaction commitment, and secondary participants follow their decisions, enabling dynamic cluster size adjustment and 'on-demand' participant management without additional coordination, reducing the burden on secondary participants and improving query throughput.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If traditional quorum protocols are used to maintain transactional consistency, then data consistency and atomicity are ensured, but system elasticity and adaptability deteriorate when adding or removing participants
Solution Approach 1:
The system segments participants into two distinct roles: quorum participants that maintain consistency and non-quorum participants that provide elasticity. This segmentation allows the system to add or remove non-quorum participants without impacting the quorum requirement, thus maintaining both data consistency and system adaptability simultaneously
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements asymmetric participant roles where quorum participants have different responsibilities compared to non-quorum participants. Quorum participants are responsible for transaction commitment decisions while non-quorum participants only execute decisions, creating an asymmetric structure that enables flexible participant management without compromising consistency
2Reliability
If all participants are required to reach consensus for transaction commitment, then strong consistency is maintained, but query throughput and operational efficiency deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the consensus-making function from all participants and concentrates it solely in quorum participants. Non-quorum participants are removed from the consensus process and only execute decisions made by quorum participants, thereby maintaining strong consistency through quorum while significantly improving query throughput by eliminating unnecessary coordination overhead
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies partial action by requiring only a subset of participants (quorum participants) to reach consensus rather than requiring all participants. This partial consensus approach maintains transactional consistency while reducing the coordination burden and improving overall system productivity
3Reliability
If the number of participants is increased to improve fault tolerance, then system reliability improves, but operational complexity and coordination overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting participants into quorum and non-quorum roles, the system can increase the total number of participants to improve fault tolerance while keeping the quorum size fixed. This segmentation prevents coordination overhead from increasing proportionally with the total participant count, as non-quorum participants do not participate in consensus coordination
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces dynamic participant management where non-quorum participants can be added or removed without affecting the quorum configuration. This dynamic structure allows the system to scale flexibly for improved fault tolerance while maintaining stable coordination overhead determined solely by the fixed quorum size
Data Source
AI summary
In some examples, asymmetric quorum protocol based distributed transaction database consistency control may include determining, by a set of primary participants of a cluster, whether a cluster-wide quorum has been reached to commit a transaction associated with a distributed transactional database. Further, based on the determination by the set of primary participants that the cluster-wide quorum has been reached to commit the transaction, instructions to a set of secondary participants of the cluster may be sent to commit the transaction. The set of secondary participants may be configured to comply with a determination by the set of primary participants to commit or to not-commit the transaction.