Protocol refinement for maintaining replicated data in distributed systems

Data can be replicated to improve availability and performance in distributed systems. To ensure one copy serializability, many protocols have been proposed. Most of these protocols are based on the quorum set approach. However, some of them are dominated. Hence, these protocols can be further improved. We devise a paradigm for refining protocols for managing replicated data based on theoretical analysis. Examples are presented to illustrate the usefulness of our methodology