#Number
TR-PDS-1998-006

#Title
Happened Before is the Wrong Model for Potential Causality

#Author
Ashis Tarafdar
Vijay K. Garg

#Abstract

The happened before model has been widely used to model distributed
computations. In particular, it has been used to model the logical time
and the potential causality aspects of a distributed computation.
Though it is a good model for logical time, we argue that it is not a
good model for potential causality.  We introduce a better model for
potential causality that extends happened before to allow independent
local events to be partially ordered.  This potential causality model
has marked advantages over the happened before model in applications
areas such as debugging and recovery.


#Bib
@TechReport{,
  author =   "Ashis Tarafdar and Vijay K. Garg",
  title =    "Happened Before is the Wrong Model for Potential Causality",
  institution =  "Parallel and Distributed Systems Laboratory, ECE
                  Dept. University of Texas at Austin",
  year =         "1998",
  number =    "ECE-PDS-1998-006",
  note =     "available via ftp or WWW at maple.ece.utexas.edu
          as technical report TR-PDS-1998-006"
}