consensus

What are the faster Paxos-related algorithms for consensus in distributed systems?

I've read Lamport's paper on Paxos. I've also heard that it isn't used much in practice, for reasons of performance. What algorithms are commonly used for consensus in distributed systems? ...

Collection should return null or empty upon a Db load ending with no records found?

Hi, If you have a method that queries the Db and returns a collection populated with the records found, what should be returned upon no records found? A new collection with .Count == 0 or null Is there any consensus on this? Or returning null and returning an empty collection should have different meanings? Thanks ...

What is the proper behaviour for a Paxos agent in this scenario?

I'm looking into Paxos and I'm confused about how the algorithm should behave in this contrived example. I hope the diagram below explains the scenario. A few points: Each agent acts as a proposer/acceptor/learner Prepare messages have form (instance, proposal_num) Propose messages have form (instance, proposal_num, proposal_val) Se...