RESTORING CHECKPOINTED PROCESSES WITHOUT RESTORING ATTRIBUTES OF EXTERNAL DATA REFERENCED BY THE PROCESSES

A checkpoint of a process is taken in order to provide a consistent state of the process in the event the process is to be restarted. When the process is restarted, the process is placed in the state it was in when the checkpoint was taken. However, there are times when certain information has changed since the last checkpoint and it should not be restored. For example, if a process is restarted on a computing unit different from the one in which the checkpoint is taken, then various attributes associated with external data referenced by the process (e.g., an address to an external function/variable) might be different than at the time of the checkpoint. Similarly, even on the same computing unit, if the functions and/or variables are reloaded, the attributes may be different. Since these new attribute values are needed for the restarted process, they should not be restored. In order to prevent restoration of the attributes, only part of the Data Section is restored. The portion of the Data Section including the attributes remains intact.