Keynote: Probabilistic Programming With Coordination and Compensation

Abstract

Failure is the typical phenomena of the execution of long-running transactions. To accommodate the random features of Internet-based computing we extend the Guarded Command Language by addition of probabilistic choice and coordination combinators. This paper deals with rollback and compensation mechanisms of the language by providing a probabilistic model. We also discuss algebraic properties of the new combinators, and show the completeness of the algebraic system by show how to convert programs to normal forms.