DataWarp: Building Applications Which Make Progress in an Inconsistent World

Some of the data available to today’s enterprise applications is inconsistent. This is an inevitable consequence of data being distributed and partially replicated in many locations. The usual approach to dealing with these imperfections is to attempt to drive them out at the application level, if not throughout the entire system. However, since at least some of the systems holding information are themselves unreliable, out of date or periodically disconnected, this is often futile. Nevertheless, considerable effort continues to be devoted to maintaining global data consistency. This paper describes an alternative approach to this problem for distributed systems which permits applications to operate in environments containing inconsistent data. Instead of taking the data available and attempting to extract a single, unique, correct view of the world, faced with inconsistencies, a DataWarp application constructs the collection of interpretations which can arise from its data. The appl...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: DAIS
• Authors: Peter Henderson, Robert John Walters, Stephen Crouch, Qinglai Ni
• Keywords: DAIS 2003, DAIS 2007, DataWarp Application, Inconsistent Data, Today’s Enterprise Applications