Exploring Design Alternatives for Replicated RAMP Transactions Using Maude

Developing correct, scalable, and fault-tolerant distributed databases is hard and labor-intensive. The increasing complexity of such systems under modern cloud infrastructures, e.g., geo-replicated multi-partitioned datacenters, further limits the number of design alternatives that can be explored in practice. There is therefore a need for the formal analysis of both their qualitative properties, e.g., data consistency, and their quantitative properties, e.g., latency, at an early design stage. In this paper we use formal modeling and both standard and statistical model checking techniques to explore the design space of replicated RAMP (Read Atomic Multi-Partition) transactions for geo-replicated databases. Specifically, we develop in Maude formal, executable specifications of three replicated RAMP designs, two by the RAMP developers and one by us, and analyze their data consistency properties. We further transform the Maude models into probabilistic rewrite theories for statistical model checking w.r.t. performance properties. Our results: (i) are consistent with the conjectures made by the RAMP developers; (ii) uncover our promising new design that not only provides all crucial data consistency guarantees but also outperforms the other design alternatives.