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While attribute-value pairs are a popular method to name objects, information retrieval from those attribute-based namespaces is not an easy task. The user has to recall correct attribute names and values and master the syntax and semantics of query formulation. This paper describes hierarchical structures in attribute-based namespaces, shows how to extract them efficiently and evaluates the quality of these structures in an user experiment. It proposes an user interface for browsing attribute-named object sets which makes this task resemble todays file-system browsers and compares the usability of this interface to normal form-based methods in an user study.
Applications which need exclusive access to a shared resource in distributed systems require a fault-tolerant and scalable mechanism to coordinate this exclusive access. Examples of such applications include distributed file systems and master/slave data replication. We present Flease, an algorithm for decentralized and fault-tolerant lease coordination in distributed systems. Our algorithm allows the processes competing for a resource to coordinate exclusive access through leases among themselves without a central component. The resulting system easily scales with an increasing number of nodes and resources. We prove that Flease ensures exclusive access, i.e. guarantees that there is at most one valid lease at any time.