Testing Distributed Systems

Safety of distributed databases, queues, consensus systems, etc.

• Generalized Isolation Level Definitions
• Weak Consistency: A Generalized Theory and Optimistic Implementations for Distributed Transactions
• Knossos Research https://github.com/jepsen-io/knossos/tree/master/research
• Elle: Inferring Isolation Anomalies from Experimental Observations
• Linearizability versus Serializability
• A Critique of ANSI SQL Isolation Levels (notes)
• Testing for Linearizability - Gavin Lowe
• Principles of Eventual Consistency
• Consistency in Non-Transactional Distributed Storage Systems
• Linearizability: A Correctness Condition for Concurrent Objects
• A Read-Only Transaction Anomaly Under Snapshot Isolation
• PRECISELY SERIALIZABLE SNAPSHOT ISOLATION

Linearizability checkers

Linearizability checking based on pseudocode from Lu et al., SOSP '15, and checking of consistency semantics describing causality and monotonicity of operations within and across sessions (e.g., monotonic writes, monotonic reads, sequential consistency, regular semantics, causal consistency --- survey provides an overview of all these consistency semantics).

• C++ Linearizability checker
• Java WatCA
• Scala conver (Paper, Slides)
• Clojure Knossos
• Clojure Elle
• Clojure fast-jepsen
• Line-up: a complete and automatic linearizability checker
• SPIN SPIN as a Linearizability Checker under Weak Memory Models
• Go https://github.com/pingcap/tipocket/tree/master/pkg/elle
• Go porcupine

Collections of papers and articles about distributed systems

• Awesome Distributed Systems
• Testing of distributed systems
• An introduction to distributed systems