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Internet services such as online shopping and trading demands database management system designed to handle large amounts of data across many commodity servers without failure. Applications such as video conferencing, file transfer, or chat are based on a collection of communications protocols and application programming interfaces that enable users’ real-time information connections. These are the kind of challenges of the fast growth of the World Wide Web.

The paper "Blotter: Low Latency Transactions for Geo-Replicated Storage", co-authored by João Leitão and Nuno Preguiça, NOVA LINCS researchers from the Computer Systems Group, Henrique Moniz (Google), Ricardo Dias (NOVA LINCS/SUSE Linux GmbH), Johannes Gehrke (Microsoft/Cornell University) and Rodrigo Rodrigues (INESC-ID) introduces a novel geo-replicated storage system that exploits a recently proposed isolation level, called Non-Monotonic Snapshot Isolation, to achieve ACID transactions within a small latency envelope.

The paper entitled "Legion: Enriching Internet Services with Peer-to-Peer Interactions" co-authored Albert van der Linde NOVA LINCS PhD student, João Leitão and Nuno Preguiça, NOVA LINCS researchers from the Computer Systems Group, Pedro Fouto (DI-FCT NOVA master student), Santiago Castiñeira and Annette Bieniusa (University of Kaiserslautern), introduces a novel architecture and framework to develop user-centric web applications. The Legion framework leverages very recent web technology, such as Web Real Time Communication (WebRTC), STUN and TURN protocols, to enable the direct interaction of javascript client applications running on browsers among themselves, providing lower latency for users while at the same time minimising the overhead imposed in the centralised infrastructure that supports the application. A live demo and tutorial on Legion is available at here.

Both papers mentioned above were accepted as full papers in 2017 World Wide Web Conference (WWW’17) that will be held in April in Australia. The International World Wide Web Conference is an annual forum bringing together some of the most influential members of the web community. With a 20-year history, it’s the world’s longest-running and most prestigious web conference.