#Number
TR-PDS-1994-010

#Title
Maintaining Global Assertions on Distributed Systems

#Author
Alexander I. Tomlinson
Vijay K. Garg 

#Abstract
This paper develops a method for maintaining global assertions
on a network of distributed processes.  The global assertion
has the form 

	$(X_{1}^{1} X_{2}^{1} \cdots X_{N_1}^{1}) + \ldots + 
	 (X_{1}^{M} X_{2}^{M} \cdots X_{N_M}^{M}) \geq K$,
	
where $X_{i}^{j}$ is a variable which is local to one process
in a distributed system and $K$ is a constant.  It is assumed
that the initial values of all local variables are known and
that the global assertion initially holds.  This f`orm is more
general than the summation form considered in earlier work.

This research has applications in distributed software
development, and as a general synchronization mechanism.  Many
classical synchronization problems (mutual exclusion, dining
philosophers, readers/writers) can be solved with the results
of this work.

#Bib
@TechReport{,
  author = 	 "V.K. Garg and A.I. Tomlinson", 
  title = 	 "Maintaining Global Assertions on Distributed Systems",
  institution =  "Parallel and Distributed Systems Laboratory, The
		  University of Texas at Austin", 
  year =	 1994,
  number =	 "TR-PDS-1994-010",
  note =	 "available via ftp or WWW at maple.ece.utexas.edu"
}