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This fourth edition of OUf textbook appears at a time when the Internet and the Web are
mature systems, supporting a wide variety of di stdbuted applications on a scale far
greater than could have been anticipated when our third edition was published almost
five years ago.
The book aims to provide an understanding of the principles on which the Internet
and other di stributed systems are based, their architecture, algorithms and design. We
begin with two conceptual overview chapters that outline the characteristics of
di stributed systems and the challenges that must be addressed in their design: scalability,
heterogeneity, security and failure handling being the most significant. These chapters
also develop abstract models for understanding process interaction, failure and security .
They are followed by foundational chapters devoted to the study of nctworking,
intcrprocess communication, remote invocation and middleware, operating system
support and naming.
We then cover the well-established topics of security, data replication, group
communication, di stributed file systems, di stributed transactions, CORBA, di stributed
shared memory and multimedia systems together with several new ones: Web Services,
XML, the Grid, peer-to-peer, mobile and ubiquitous systems. Algorithms associated
with all these topics are covered ac;; they arise and also in separate chapters devoted to
timing, coordinat.ion and agreement.
Provides a broad and up-to-date account of the principles and practice of distributed system design. |
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