Distributed computing

Distributed computing is a field of computer science that studies distributed systems. A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to one another. The components interact with one another in order to achieve a common goal.

Overview

Three significant characteristics of distributed systems are: concurrency of components, lack of a global clock, and independent failure of components. Examples of distributed systems vary from SOA-based systems to massively multiplayer online games to peer-to-peer applications.

A computer program that runs within a distributed system is called a distributed program (and distributed programming is the process of writing such programs). There are many different types of implementations for the message passing mechanism, including pure HTTP, RPC-like connectors and message queues.

Distributed computing models

There are several distributed computing models including the client-server model, the 3-tier model, the n-tier model, the distributed objects model, the loose coupling model or the tight coupling model.

Distributed computing technologies

Distributed computing technologies include Distributed Computing Environment (DCE), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI), SOAP, .NET Remoting, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Message Passing Interface (MPI), and Yet Another Remote Procedure Call (YARP).

See also

• Cloud computing
• Grid computing
• Parallel computing
• Ubiquitous computing
• Fog computing
• Edge computing

References

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