A simple lock manager for distributed heterogeneous systems

Distributed systems require an efficient way to manage access to shared data and using lock management system is a software-based solution to it. Current locks a re mostly special purpose locks and do not consider the heterogeneity needed for these systems. In this paper, we use the concept of semaphore as a basic structure to manage critical regions in a distributed heterogeneous system. We propose a distributed lock mechanism that is implemented with the aim of simplicity and ability to run on heterogeneous systems. The comparison of this lock mechanism with other comparable mechanisms indicates that it has the necessary and sufficient locking facilities and supports heterogeneous distribution. Besides, we report different average operation times of our implemented lock.