Abstract
While a significant number of databases are deployed in cloud environments, pushing part or all data storage and querying planes closer to their sources (i.e., to the edge) can provide advantages in latency, connectivity, privacy, energy, and scalability. This article dissects the advantages provided by databases in edge and fog environments by surveying application domains and discussing the key drivers for pushing database systems to the edge. At the same time, it also identifies the main challenges faced by developers in this new environment and analyzes the mechanisms employed to deal with them. By providing an overview of the current state of edge and fog databases, this survey provides valuable insights into future research directions.

Abstract
We present LazyFS, a new fault injection tool that simplifies the debugging and reproduction of complex data durability bugs experienced by databases, key-value stores, and other data-centric systems in crashes. Our tool simulates persistence properties of POSIX file systems (e.g., operations ordering and atomicity) and enables users to inject lost and torn write faults with a precise and controlled approach. Further, it provides profiling information about the system’s operations flow and persisted data, enabling users to better understand the root cause of errors. Weuse LazyFS to study seven important systems: PostgreSQL, etcd, Zookeeper, Redis, LevelDB, PebblesDB, and Lightning Network. Our fault injection campaign shows that LazyFS automates and facilitates the reproduction of five known bug reports containing manual and complex reproducibility steps. Further, it aids in understanding and reproducing seven ambiguous bugs reported by users. Finally, LazyFS is used to find eight new bugs, which lead to data loss, corruption, and unavailability.

Abstract
TADA is a unique toolkit designed to foster the use and implementation of approximate distributed agreement primitives. Developed in Java, TADA provides ready-to-use implementations of several approximate agreement algorithms, as well as the tools to enable programmers/researchers to easily implement further protocols: A template that enables new protocol implementations to be created by simply changing specific functions; and high-level abstractions for communication and concurrency control. As an example, the toolkit includes a ready-to-use implementation for clock synchronisation between distributed processes. Further use cases can include sensor input stabilisation and distributed machine learning, or other instances of distributed agreement where network synchrony cannot be assumed, byzantine fault tolerance may be required and a bounded divergence in decision values can be tolerated.

Abstract
Performance of transactional systems is degraded by update hotspots as conflicts lead to waiting and wasted work. This is particularly challenging in emerging large-scale database systems, as latency increases the probability of conflicts, state-of-the-art lock-based mitigations are not available, and most alternatives provide only weak consistency and cannot enforce lower bound invariants. We address this challenge with Multi-Record Values (MRVs), a technique that can be layered on existing database systems and that uses randomization to split and access numeric values in multiple records such that the probability of conflict can be made arbitrarily small. The only coordination needed is the underlying transactional system, meaning it retains existing isolation guarantees. The proposal is tested on five different systems ranging from DBx1000 (scale-up) to MySQL GR and a cloud-native NewSQL system (scale-out). The experiments explore design and configuration trade-offs and, with the TPC-C and STAMP Vacation benchmarks, demonstrate improved throughput and reduced abort rates when compared to alternatives.

Abstract
Approximate agreement has long been relegated to the sidelines compared to exact consensus, with its most notable application being clock synchronisation. Other proposed applications stemming from control theory target multi-agent consensus, namely for sensor stabilisation, coordination in robotics, and trust estimation. Several proposals for approximate agreement follow the Mean Subsequence Reduce approach, simply applying different functions at each phase. However, taking clock synchronisation as an example, applications do not fit neatly into the MSR model: Instead they require adapting the algorithms' internals. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we identify additional configuration points, establishing a more general template of MSR approximate agreement algorithms. We then show how this allows us to implement not only generic algorithms but also those tailored for specific purposes (clock synchronisation). Second, we propose a toolkit for making approximate agreement practical, providing classical implementations as well as allow these to be configured for specific purposes. We validate the implementation with classical algorithms and clock synchronisation.