Distributed Systems

Lecturer: Dr J.M. Bacon (jmb@cl.cam.ac.uk)

No. of lectures: 8

Prerequisite courses: Concurrent Systems, Operating System Functions, Digital Communication, Security  

Introduction.

Characteristics specific to distributed systems. Software design. Client-server and object models. Distribution transparency. Security requirements (implementation details are covered in the Security course).

Time.

Physical and logical time. Event ordering. Clock synchronisation. Composite events. Event-driven systems.

Naming.

Design of names, pure or hierarchical. Interpretation of names in a context. Binding. Long-term consistency.

Communication.

Use of the OS communications interface, e.g.\ Unix sockets. High-level protocols such as remote procedure call, remote object invocation.

Storage.

Design of network-based storage services. Caching and replication.

Algorithms and application protocols.

Consistency of data. Asynchronous and synchronous algorithms. Atomic commitment protocols. Election. Mutual exclusion.

Case studies.

Recommended books:

Coulouris, G.F., Dollimore, J.B. & Kindberg, T. (1994). Distributed Systems, Concepts and Design. Addison-Wesley (2nd ed.).

Tanenbaum, A.S. (1995). Distributed Operating Systems. Prentice-Hall.

Mullender, S. (ed.) (1993). Distributed Systems. Addison-Wesley (2nd ed.).

Bacon, J. (1997). Concurrent Systems. Addison-Wesley (2nd ed.).