Tech Report CS-93-32
Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Consistent Global Snapshots
Robert H.B. Netzer and Jian Xu
July 1993
Abstract:
Consistent global snapshots are important in many distributed applications. We prove the exact conditions for an arbitrary checkpoint, or a set of checkpoints, to belong to a consistent global snapshot, a previously open problem. To describe the conditions, we introduce a generalization of Lamport's happened-before relation called a zigzag path.
(complete text in pdf or gzipped postscript)