Eventually consistent storage and transactions in cloud based environment

Abstract

An 'Eventually Consistent Sharing Model' provides various techniques for using 'revision diagrams' to determine both arbitration and visibility of changes or updates to shared data (e.g., data, databases, lists, etc.) without requiring a causally consistent partial order for visibility, and without requiring change or update timestamps for arbitration. In particular, the Eventually Consistent Sharing Model provides fork-join automata based on revision diagrams to track the forking and joining of data versions, thereby tracking updates made to replicas of that data by one or more sources. “Cloud types” are used to define a structure of the shared data that enables fully automatic conflict resolution when updating the shared data. These concepts enable mobile devices (or other computing devices that may periodically go “offline”) to share structured data in cloud-based environments in a manner that provides local data replicas for offline operation while guaranteeing eventually consistent convergence of the data replicas.