Performance evaluation of rollback-recovery techniques in computer programs

Rollback recovery is a backward error recovery technique used to recover from temporary faults in database and process control systems. Rollback in process control systems is generally constrained by deadlines, thereby requiring a dynamic insertion of rollback points. This is in contrast to rollback recovery in database systems in which rollback points are inserted at equidistant intervals. A simple model based on a semi-Markov process is developed to study the performance of rollback recovery strategies. Using this model, the mean program completion time is obtained for both database and process control systems when rollback recovery is implemented. The analytic results obtained by the semi-Markov model are compared with the simulation results by means of extensive computer simulations