A Composite Stabilizing Data Structure

A data structure is stabilizing if, for any arbitrary (and possibly illegitimate) initial state, any sequence of sufficiently many operations brings the data structure to a legitimate state. A data structure is available if, for any arbitrary state, the effect of any operation on the structure is consistent with the operation’s response. This paper presents an available stabilizing data structure made from two constituents, a heap and a search tree. These constituents are themselves available and stabilizing data structures described in previous papers. Each item of the composite data structure is a pair (key,value), which allows items to be removed by either minimum value (via the heap) or by key (via the search tree) in logarithmic time. This is the first research to address the problem of constructing larger data structures from smaller ones that have desired availability and stabilization properties.