For finite modules over a local ring and complexes with finitely generated homology, we consider several homological invariants sharing some basic properties with projective dimension.

In the second section, we introduce the notion of a semidualizing complex, which is a generalization of both a dualizing complex and a suitable module. Our goal is to establish some common properties of such complexes and the homological dimension with respect to them. Basic properties are investigated in Sec. 2.1. In Sec. 2.2, we study the structure of the set of semidualizing complexes over a local ring, which is closely related to the conjecture of Avramov-Foxby on the transitivity of the G-dimension. In particular, we prove that, for a pair of semidualizing complexes X ₁ and X ₂ such that G _X2, we have X ₂ ≃ X ₁ ⊗ _R ^L RHom _R (X ₁, X ₂). Specializing to the case of semidualizing modules over Artinian rings, we obtain a number of quantitative results for the rings possessing a configuration of semidualizing modules of special form. For the rings with m ³=0, this condition reduces to the existence of a nontrivial semidualizing module, and we prove a number of structural results in this case.

In the third section, we consider the class of modules that contains the modules of finite CI-dimension and enjoys some nice additional properties, in particular, good behavior in short exact sequences.

In the fourth section, we introduce a new homological invariant, CM-dimension, which provides a characterization for Cohen-Macaulay rings in precisely the same way as projective dimension does for regular rings, CI-dimension for locally complete intersections, and G-dimension for Gorenstein rings.