Atomic actions for fault-tolerance using CSP

Abstract

Two complementary techniques have evolved for providing fault-tolerance in software: forward error recovery and backward error recovery. Few implementations permit both approaches to be combined within a particular application. Fewer techniques are available for the construction of fault-tolerant software for systems involving concurrent processes and multiple processors. Many schemes for supporting forward or backward recovery are based on some concept of an atomic action. The authors propose a mechanism for supporting an atomic action in a system of communicating sequential processes (CSP). The atomic action is used as the basic unit for providing fault-tolerance. The atomic action is called an FT-action, and both forward and backward error recovery are performed in the context of an FT-action.