INTRODUCTION
• A distributed system is one in which hardware or software
components located at networked computers communicate and
coordinate their actions only by message passing.
• Our definition of distributed systems has the following significant
consequences:
➢ Concurrency
➢ No Global Clock
➢ Independent Failures
Selected application domains and associated networked applications
Finance and commerce eCommerce e.g. Amazon and eBay, PayPal, online banking and
trading
The information society Web information and search engines, ebooks, Wikipedia; social
networking: Facebook and MySpace.
Creative industries and online gaming, music and film in the home, user-generated
entertainment content, e.g. YouTube, Flickr
Healthcare health informatics, on online patient records, monitoring patients
Education e-learning, virtual learning environments; distance learning
Transport and logistics GPS in route finding systems, map services: Google Maps,
Google Earth
Science The Grid as an enabling technology for collaboration between
scientists
Environmental management sensor technology to monitor earthquakes, floods or tsunamis
Financial Trading System
• Trading systems receive data from multiple heterogeneous sources,
such as:
➢ Reuters market data events
➢ FIX protocol events (Financial Information eXchange)
• These sources use different formats and event technologies, creating a
heterogeneity challenge in distributed systems.
• Adapters are used to translate all incoming heterogeneous event formats
into a common internal format.
• Trading platforms must handle many event streams arriving at high
speeds.
• Automation is achieved through Complex Event Processing (CEP).
• CEP allows the system to compose multiple events into:
➢ logical patterns
➢ temporal patterns
➢ spatial patterns
• CEP helps identify meaningful trends or opportunities within fast-
moving event streams.
The Internet
• It is a vast interconnected collection of computer networks of
many different types.
• Multimedia services are available on the Internet enabling users to
access audio and video data including music, radio, TV channels,
phone, and video conferencing.
A typical portion of the Internet
intranet
ISP
backbone
satellite link
desktop computer:
server:
network link:
Intranet
An intranet is a portion of the Internet that is separately
administered and has a boundary that can be configured to
enforce local security policies.
A typical Intranet
email server Desk to p
co mp uters
print and other servers
Local area
Web server network
email server
print
File server
other servers
the rest of
the Internet
router/firewall
Mobile Networks
➢ Technological advances in device miniaturization and wireless
networking have led increasingly to the integration of small and
portable computing devices into distributed systems.
➢ These devices include:
❖Laptop computers
❖Handheld devices
❖Wearable devices
❖Devices embedded in appliances
Portable and Handheld Devices in a Distributed System
Cluster
• A type of parallel or distributed processing system, which
consists of a collection of interconnected stand-alone
computers cooperatively working together as a single, integrated
computing resource. The computers may be standard per
uniprocessor or multiprocessor.
• A cluster can be used for providing highly scalable services such as
search engines provide for users all over the Internet.
Grid
• A type of parallel and distributed system that enables the sharing,
selection, and aggregation of geographically distributed
autonomous resources dynamically at runtime depending on their
availability, capability, performance, cost, and users' quality-of-
service requirements.
The World Wide Web
• It is an evolving system for publishing and accessing resources and
services across the Internet.
The Web is built on three main standard technologies:
1. HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
• Defines the content, structure, and layout of web pages.
• Interpreted and rendered by web browsers.
2. URLs/URIs (Uniform Resource Locators / Identifiers)
• Provide a unique address for documents and resources on the Web.
• Enable browsers to locate and access web resources.
3. Client–Server Architecture using HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol)
• Browsers act as clients sending requests to web servers.
• Servers return documents and other resources.
Web Servers and Web Browsers
Web servers Browsers
[Link]
[Link]
Internet
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]
File system of [Link]
[Link] standards
[Link]
Cloud Computing
Design Challenges of Distributed Systems
Designers of distributed systems need to take the following challenges
into account:
1. Heterogeneity
❖ Heterogeneous components must be able to interoperate.
2. Openness
❖ Interfaces should allow components to be added or replaced.
3. Security
❖ The system should only be used in the way intended.
4. Scalability
❖ System should work efficiently with an increasing number of users.
❖ System performance should increase with inclusion of additional resources.
5. Failure handling
❖ Failure of a component (partial failure) should not result in failure of the
whole system.
6. Transparency
❖ Distribution should be hidden from the user as much as possible.
1. Heterogeneity
▪ Heterogeneous components that must be able to
interoperate, apply to all of the following:
➢ Networks
➢ Hardware architectures
➢ Operating systems
➢ Programming languages
▪ Examples that mask differences in network, operating
systems, hardware and software to provide heterogeneity are
➢ Middleware
➢ Internet protocols
➢ Mobile code
➢ Middleware
• It applies to a software layer and provides a programming abstraction.
• It masks the heterogeneity of the underlying networks, hardware,
operating systems and programming languages.
• Example: Common Object Request Broker (CORBA)
➢ Mobile Code
• It is the code that can be sent from one computer to another and run
at the destination. Example: Java Applets
2. Openness
▪ Distributed systems must be extensible.
▪ Openness is the characteristic that determines whether the system can
be extended and re-implemented in various ways.
▪ The first step in openness is publishing the documentation of
software components and interfaces of the components to make
them available to software developers.
3. Security
▪ Security for information resources has three components:
➢ Confidentiality
❖ Protection against disclosure to unauthorized individual.
➢ Integrity
❖Protection against alteration or corruption.
➢ Availability
❖Protection against interference with the means to access
the resources.
▪ Security Mechanisms are Encryption, Authentication,
Authorization
Security Challenges
▪ Denial of Service attacks
➢ It is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its
intended users.
▪ Security of mobile code
➢ Mobile code needs to be handled with care.
4. Scalability
Challenges of designing scalable distributed systems are:
➢Controlling the cost of physical resources
➢Controlling the performance loss
➢Preventing software resources running out
➢Avoiding performance bottlenecks
5. Failure Handling
Techniques for dealing with failures:
• Detecting failures – Example: Checksums
• Masking failures –
Example: Retransmission of corrupt messages, File redundancy
• Tolerating failures
Example: Exception handling, Timeouts
• Recovery from Failure - Example: Rollback mechanisms
• Redundancy - Example: Redundant components
6. Transparency
• Access Transparency
It enables local and remote resources to be accessed using identical
operations.
• Location Transparency
It enables resources to be accessed without knowledge of their
physical or network location (Example: which building or IP address).
• Concurrency Transparency
It enables several processes to operate concurrently using shared
resources without interference between them.
• Replication Transparency
It enables multiple instances of resources to be used to increase
reliability and performance without knowledge of the replicas by users
or application programmers.
• Failure Transparency
It enables the concealment of faults, allowing users and application
programs to complete their tasks despite the failure of hardware or
software components.
• Mobility Transparency
It allows the movement of resources and clients within a system
without affecting the operation of users or programs.
• Performance Transparency
It allows the system to be reconfigured to improve performance
as loads vary.
• Scaling Transparency
It allows the system and applications to expand in scale without
change to the system structure or the application algorithms.