SwiftCloud: Fault-tolerant geo-replication integrated all the way to the client machine - Zawirski et al. 2013 Data is stored in the cloud, presentation is on mobile devices, and application processing is increasingly split between the two. As mobile devices get more and more capable, we would like to exploit more and more of that capability. … Continue reading SwiftCloud: Fault-tolerant geo-replication integrated all the way to the client
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The Log-Structured Merge-Tree (LSM Tree)
The Log-Structured Merge-Tree (LSM Tree) - O'Neil et al. '96. Log-Structured Merge is an important technique used in many modern data stores (for example, BigTable, Cassandra, HBase, Riak, ...). Suppose you have a hierarchy of storage options for data - for example, RAM, SSDs, Spinning disks, with different price/performance characteristics. Furthermore, you have a large … Continue reading The Log-Structured Merge-Tree (LSM Tree)
Detecting Discontinuities in Large-Scale Systems
Detecting Discontinuities in Large-Scale Systems - Malik et al 2014. The 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing is coming to London in a couple of weeks time. Many of the papers don't seem to be online yet, but here's one that is. Malik et al. tackle the problem of long-term forecasting for … Continue reading Detecting Discontinuities in Large-Scale Systems
Use of Formal Methods at Amazon Web Services
Use of Formal Methods at Amazon Web Services - Newcombe et al 2014 Leslie Lamport recently gave a talk at the React conference on the specification language TLA. I wasn't there to hear the talk, but I was intrigued enough to dig in and find out a little more. Especially since I have some experience … Continue reading Use of Formal Methods at Amazon Web Services
Church’s Thesis and Functional Programming
Church's Thesis and Functional Programming - Turner 2006 One of a collection of papers celebrating the 70th anniversary of Church's thesis in 2006, as recently recommended by Erik Meijer on twitter. Both the thesis and the lambda calculus have been of seminal influence on the development of Computing Science. There were three independently developed definitions … Continue reading Church’s Thesis and Functional Programming
Life Beyond Distributed Transactions
Life Beyond Distributed Transactions: An Apostate's Opinion - Pat Helland, 2007 It takes real skill to strip something back to its essence and explain it clearly in such a way that the ramifications become apparent. In my view Pat Helland pulls this off admirably in this paper and helps the reader think more deeply about … Continue reading Life Beyond Distributed Transactions
Probabilistic Programming
Probabilistic Programming - Gordon et al 2014 Let's jump straight into some code - what is the meaning of this program in the PROB programming language? On lines 2 and 3, c1 and c2 are assigned to the result of a Fair Coin Toss. We then constrain the allowed outcomes (line 4) to be those … Continue reading Probabilistic Programming
One VM to Rule Them All
One VM to rule them all - Wuerthinger et al. 2013 Building high-performance virtual machines is hard , and a number of widely used languages only have lower-performance implementations. Wuerthinger et al. want to make it easier for you to create high-performance VMs without needing to create highly complex implementations. According to the paper: Java … Continue reading One VM to Rule Them All
RAPPOR: Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response
RAPPOR: Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response - Erlingsson et al. 2014 The RAPPOR paper made a brief appearance on HN a few weeks ago, and addresses the question of privacy preservation while collecting data - for example, in order to improve a service offering. Crowdsourcing data to make better, more informed decisions is becoming increasingly … Continue reading RAPPOR: Randomized Aggregatable Privacy-Preserving Ordinal Response
End-to-End Arguments in System Design
End-to-end arguments in system design - Saltzer, Reed, & Clark 1984. A true classic from 30 years ago. From the abstract: This paper presents a design principle that helps guide placement of functions among the modules of a distributed computer system. The principle, called the end-to-end argument, suggests that functions placed at low levels of … Continue reading End-to-End Arguments in System Design
the morning paper 