article

Detecting causal relationships in distributed computations: in search of the holy grail

Authors:

Reinhard Schwarz,

Friedemann MatternAuthors Info & Claims

Distributed Computing, Volume 7, Issue 3

Pages 149 - 174

https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02277859

Published: 01 March 1994 Publication History

Abstract

The paper shows that characterizing the causal relationship between significant events is an important but non-trivial aspect for understanding the behavior of distributed programs. An introduction to the notion of causality and its relation to logical time is given; some fundamental results concerning the characterization of causality are presented. Recent work on the detection of causal relationships in distributed computations is surveyed. The issue of observing distributed computations in a causally consistent way and the basic problems of detecting global predicates are discussed. To illustrate the major difficulties, some typical monitoring and debugging approaches are assessed, and it is demonstrated how their feasibility is severely limited by the fundamental problem to master the complexity of causal relationships.

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Detecting causal relationships in distributed computations: in search of the holy grail

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cover image Distributed Computing

Distributed Computing Volume 7, Issue 3

March 1994

57 pages

ISSN:0178-2770

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Springer-Verlag

Berlin, Heidelberg

Publication History

Published: 01 March 1994

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