research-article

Transactuations: Where Transactions Meet the Physical World

Authors:

Tanakorn Leesatapornwongsa,

Aritra Sengupta,

Masoud Saeida Ardekani,

Cesar A. StuardoAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), Volume 36, Issue 4

Article No.: 13, Pages 1 - 31

https://doi.org/10.1145/3380907

Published: 30 May 2020 Publication History

Abstract

A large class of IoT applications read sensors, execute application logic, and actuate actuators. However, the lack of high-level programming abstractions compromises correctness, especially in the presence of failures and unwanted interleaving between applications. A key problem arises when operations on IoT devices or the application itself fails, which leads to inconsistencies between the physical state and application state, breaking application semantics and causing undesired consequences. Transactions are a well-established abstraction for correctness, but assume properties that are absent in an IoT context. In this article, we study one such environment, smart home, and establish inconsistencies manifesting out of failures. We propose an abstraction called transactuation that empowers developers to build reliable applications. Our runtime, Relacs, implements the abstraction atop a real smart-home platform. We evaluate programmability, performance, and effectiveness of transactuations to demonstrate its potential as a powerful abstraction and execution model.

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Cited By

Zhang CLi SSong YMeng QLu LZhu HWang X(2024)A Lightweight and Chip-Level Reconfigurable Architecture for Next-Generation IoT End DevicesIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2023.334309473:3(747-763)Online publication date: Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2023.3343094
Zhang CLi SSong YMeng QChen MBai YLu LZhu HAamodt TJerger NSwift M(2023)LEGO: Empowering Chip-Level Functionality Plug-and-Play for Next-Generation IoT DevicesProceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 310.1145/3582016.3582050(404-418)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582016.3582050
Sutra PShapiro M(2022)Database Consistency ModelsEncyclopedia of Big Data Technologies10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_203-2(1-12)Online publication date: 24-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_203-2

Index Terms

Transactuations: Where Transactions Meet the Physical World
1. Computer systems organization
  1. Dependable and fault-tolerant systems and networks
    1. Reliability
  2. Embedded and cyber-physical systems
    1. Sensors and actuators
2. Information systems
  1. Data management systems
    1. Database management system engines
      1. Database transaction processing

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cover image ACM Transactions on Computer Systems

ACM Transactions on Computer Systems Volume 36, Issue 4

Section: Best of ATC 2019 and Regular Paper

November 2018

115 pages

ISSN:0734-2071

EISSN:1557-7333

DOI:10.1145/3394910

Editor:
Michael Swift
University of Wisconsin, USA

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Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 30 May 2020

Online AM: 07 May 2020

Accepted: 01 January 2020

Received: 01 October 2019

Published in TOCS Volume 36, Issue 4

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Cited By

Zhang CLi SSong YMeng QLu LZhu HWang X(2024)A Lightweight and Chip-Level Reconfigurable Architecture for Next-Generation IoT End DevicesIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2023.334309473:3(747-763)Online publication date: Mar-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/TC.2023.3343094
Zhang CLi SSong YMeng QChen MBai YLu LZhu HAamodt TJerger NSwift M(2023)LEGO: Empowering Chip-Level Functionality Plug-and-Play for Next-Generation IoT DevicesProceedings of the 28th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 310.1145/3582016.3582050(404-418)Online publication date: 25-Mar-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3582016.3582050
Sutra PShapiro M(2022)Database Consistency ModelsEncyclopedia of Big Data Technologies10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_203-2(1-12)Online publication date: 24-May-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63962-8_203-2

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