The GSD´s research activities have been focused on dependable distributed systems, mobile computing, distributed objects and operating systems. This research has been partially funded by several FCT and EU projects and has two main thrusts:

Dependability on large-scale networks

Our work has been focused on fundamental and applied research on models, algorithms and tools enabling to build dependable services and applications on large-scale networks. The approaches being pursued depart from solid ground on fault-tolerant distributed coordination and group communication protocols and explore novel ideas and intuitions deemed to adapt well to large-scale networks. Current research, namely on optimistic and semantically reliable group protocols and on models of partial replication, is strongly supported by ongoing projects and represent the basis of future research.

Weakly consistent data replication

In line with our past research in distributed and mobile filesystems, we have been conducting research in theoretical and systems support to weak consistency file replication and versioning. Recent work produced a versioning/replication tool that targets partitioned filesystems, and a theoretical model for dependency tracking in autonomous systems with a dynamically evolving number of replicas. Current and future research in this line targets new developments in the dynamic replication theory, the development of a novel approach to dependency tracking in fixed replication sets, and the use of dependency tracking for mutable data management in global peer-to-peer systems.

GSD is affiliated to the Minema ESF research network.