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DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES

SYSTEMS SEMINAR

                    -Friday, March 2, 1990

Professor  Jay  Black,  Dept.  of Computer Science will
speak   on   ``Abstraction  for  Debugging  Distributed
Programs.'' (This is a joint work with W.H. Cheung).

TIME:                 10:30 a.m.

ROOM:                 DC 1331

ABSTRACT

Distributed  programs are evolving towards greater size
and  complexity.   A  non-trivial  distributed  program
consists  of  a  large  number  of  cooperating dynamic
processes.   Not  only  do distributed programs tend to
involve  more  code  than their sequential equivalents,
but   they   also  suffer  from  further  increases  in
complexity  due  to  the  presence of concurrency, non-
determinism,  and the possibility of partial failure of
processes,    nodes,    and   communication   channels.
Debugging  distributed  programs  is  thus  a difficult
endeavor,  and  new  techniques  are required to manage
this more complex environment.

One  of the most powerful tools we know for controlling
complexity  is  abstraction,  and we provide a rigorous
basis  for  the use of it in distributed debugging, and
hence  in  distributed  systems  in  general.   We will
discuss   how   abstraction  can  be  applied  both  to
processes  (forming  "clusters" or process groups), and
to events occurring in the system.

This  talk  will  serve  as  a  starting  point  for  a
discussion  on  current  and possible future directions
for  the Shoshin distributed debugger prototype design.
Any interested people are welcome.