1985 Reports

An Automated Performance Analysis of a Two Phase Locking Protocol

Nounou, Nihal; Yemini, Yechiam

ANALYST, an interactive protocol performance analyzer, is used to analyze the performance of a two phase locking protocol. ANALYST implements a specification-based methodology for performance analysis of protocols which extracts from an algebraic specification of a protocol a model of its timing behavior. Any timing requirement or performance measure that can be formally specified in terms of attributes of this timing behavior can be thus analyzed. An algebraic specification of a two phase locking protocol that uses time-out for deadlock detection is provided. Two timing requirements necessary for its efficient performance are specified and analyzed yielding optimal settings of protocol parameters (such as timeout rate). Additionally, the mean response time and probability of deadlock of the protocol are specified and analyzed. This, to the best knowledge of the authors, is the first automated, analytic performance analysis of such a high-level protocol.