Theona.Stefanis@A.CS.CMU.EDU (05/19/86)
PS SEMINAR Date: Thursday, 22 May Time: 3:30 Place: WeH 7220 Prolegomenon to the Theory of Nested Transactions Michael Merritt A. T. and T. Bell Laboratories Murray Hill, New Jersey "The possibility of a thing can never be proved merely from the fact that its concept is not self-contradictory, but only through its being supported by some corresponding intuition." Immanuel Kant This talk develops the foundation for a general theory of nested transactions. Not without trepidation, it presents yet another formal model for studying concurrency and resiliency in a nested environment. This model has distinct advantages over the many alternatives, the greatest of which is the unification of a subject replete with formalisms, correctness conditions and proof techniques. The speaker is presently engaged in an ambitious project to recast the substantial amount of work in nested transactions within this single intuitive framework. The talk focuses on preliminary results of that project--a description of the model, and its use in stating and proving correctness conditions of a lock-based concurrent scheduler. This is joint work with Nancy Lynch, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.