Reliable file systems for Transaction Processing in Unix

[Gerardo Brenes]

Sorry if you have already read this before, something went wrong with my
first posting and I have not seen it for a week.
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WHAT: Request for information related to file system reliability in UNIX and 
      its impact in the development of Transaction Processing Systems ( TPS in
      the rest of the article).

As an special problems topic, we are starting to address on-line transaction 
processing in the UNIX environment. We are especially interested in the
reliability issues raised.

In a TPS, reliability is usually provided by supporting
redundant data and atomic actions. Some of the questions that we are looking
at are:
 
   1. How is the support to be divided between the operating system and the
      TPS?
   2. How is the interface between the two supposed to look like?
   3. How to manage the interaction between techniques for support of
      redundancy and support of atomic actions?

The software support tools provided by UNIX together with the
the file system switch capability in SVR3, makes it attractive
to try prototyping a file system tailored for on-line TPS and also offers
the opportunity to experiment with various alternatives for such a file
system.

WHAT WE WANT TO FIND OUT FIRST IS: 
   1. What experiences have people had in the development of TPS in UNIX.
   2. References to any problems that the standard file system might present
      for the reliability of the TPS and how they have been addressed.
   3. Why wouldn't (or would) you use UNIX to handle your tax records or
      anything that you want to be sure is there? 

We shall greatly appreciate receiving (via mail) any info or references in
regard to any of the above.

We shall keep the interested parties informed of the project's progress and
summarize to the net when appropiate.

Thanks a million!!



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Smile ! They might think you are nuts and just go along with it!
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Gerardo Brenes 
School of Information & Computer Science, Georgia Tech, Atlanta GA 30332
CSNet:  gerardo at GATech	
ARPA:	gerardo%GATech.CSNet at CSNet-Relay.ARPA
uucp:	...!{akgua,allegra,hplabs,ihnp4,linus,seismo,ulysses}!gatech!gerardo
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