Performance Trade-offs in Transactional Systems

Abstract

During the last decade a number of systems supporting different forms of distributed transactions have been proposed, each implementing a different performance trade-off in the design space. In this paper we collect the performance features that have been identified by previous works and offer a systematic analysis of known results regarding the impossibility of achieving certain combinations of desirable properties along these dimensions. We also compare previous transactional systems in the light of this set of desirable performance aspects. Finally we discuss how certain combinations of features may be leverage to guide new transactional system designs.