Fault tolerance in concurrent object-oriented software through coordinated error recovery

Presents a scheme for coordinated error recovery between multiple interacting objects in a concurrent object-oriented system. A conceptual framework for fault tolerance is established based on a general object concurrency model that is supported by most concurrent object-oriented languages and systems. This framework integrates two complementary concepts-conversations and transactions. Conversations (associated with cooperative exception handling) are used to provide coordinated error recovery between concurrent interacting activities whilst transactions are used to maintain the consistency of shared resources in the presence of concurrent access and possible failures. The serialisability property of transactions is exploited in order to help prevent unexpected information smuggling. The proposed framework is illustrated by means of a case study, and various linguistic and implementation issues are discussed.<>