Beyond replicated storage: eventually-consistent distributed data structures

Abstract

While our understanding of eventual consistency for replicated data has improved considerably over the past few years, relatively little work focused on eventually-consistent distributed data structures. By revisiting PL-Gossip, our self-managed, decentralized algorithm for maintaining cluster hierarchies in wireless sensor networks, this paper illustrates sample problems one is likely to encounter when dealing with such structures. Given the growing interest in analyzing huge, dynamic, inter-dependent data sets, we believe that the paper will inspire research to facilitate understanding and devising eventually-consistent distributed data structures.