Swift-WAN - System support for distributed dynamic content Web services

Many current web services are based on dynamic content. Users connect to a web site and receive customized information, for example, depending on the request parameters as well as the users´ preferences and access patterns. Typically, a dynamic content web site is located at a single geographic site and the information is stored in a database. There is a need to scale these systems and increase their availability using replication across a geographically-distributed wide-area network. In such a replicated system, requests execute on "nearby" replicas, thereby avoiding long roundtrip delays, and distributing the load over the replicas. Moreover, if the nearby site becomes inaccessible, clients are transparently switched to other replicas. The goal of Swift is to design and implement a scalable and highly-available database replication middleware to be used as the underlying infrastructure of modern dynamic content web services. The project is a joint research effort between the University of Lugano (USI) and the Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL).

Co-funded by Hasler Foundation.