Advances in Distributed Systems: Advanced Distributed Computing: From Algorithms to Systems (Lecture Notes in Computer Science (1752))

In 1992 we initiated a research project on large scale distributed computing systems (LSDCS). It was a collaborative project involving research institutes and universities in Bologna, Grenoble, Lausanne, Lisbon, Rennes, Rocquencourt, Newcastle, and Twente. The World Wide Web had recently been developed at CERN, but its use was not yet as common place as it is today and graphical browsers had yet to be developed. It was clear to us (and to just about everyone else) that LSDCS comprising several thousands to millions of individual computer systems (nodes) would be coming into existence as a consequence both of technological advances and the demands placed by applications. We were excited about the problems of building large distributed systems, and felt that serious rethinking of many of the existing computational paradigms, algorithms, and structuring principles for distributed computing was called for. In our research proposal, we summarized the problem domain as follows: “We expect LSDCS to exhibit great diversity of node and communications capability. Nodes will range from (mobile) laptop computers, workstations to supercomputers. Whereas mobile computers may well have unreliable, low bandwidth communications to the rest of the system, other parts of the system may well possess high bandwidth communications capability. To appreciate the problems posed by the sheer scale of a system comprising thousands of nodes, we observe that such systems will be rarely functioning in their entirety. Time in Distributed System Models and Algorithms....Pages 1-32 Consensus in Asynchronous Distributed Systems: A Concise Guided Tour....Pages 33-47 Group Communication in Partitionable Distributed Systems....Pages 48-78 Enhancing Replica Management Services to Cope with Group Failures....Pages 79-103 Recent Advances in Distributed Garbage Collection....Pages 104-126 Topology-Aware Algorithms for Large-Scale Communication....Pages 127-156 Responsive Protocols for Distributed Multimedia Applications?....Pages 157-181 Programming Partition-Aware Network Applications?....Pages 182-212 Deploying Distributed Objects on the Internet....Pages 213-237 Integrating Group Communication with Transactions for Implementing Persistent Replicated Objects....Pages 238-253 Replication of CORBA Objects....Pages 254-276 Constructing Dependable Web Services....Pages 277-294 Support for Distributed CSCW Applications....Pages 295-326 Component-Based Programming of Distributed Applications....Pages 327-353 OPENflow: A CORBA Based Transactional Workflow System....Pages 354-374 Improving the Effectiveness of Web Caching....Pages 375-401 Mobility and Coordination for Distributed Java Applications....Pages 402-425 PerDiS: Design, Implementation, and Use of a PERsistent DIstributed Store....Pages 427-452 The University Student Registration System: A Case Study in Building a High-Availability Distributed Application Using General Purpose Components....Pages 453-471 Quality of Service and Electronic Newspaper: The Etel Solution....Pages 472-496 FlexiNet: A Flexible, Component-Oriented Middleware System....Pages 497-508 Annotation This book documents the main results developed in the course of the European project "Basic Research on Advanced Distributed Computing: From Algorithms to Systems (BROADCAST)." Eight major European research groups in distributed computing cooperated on this projects, from 1992 to 1999. The 21 thoroughly cross-reviewed final full papers present the state-of-the-art results on distributed systems in a coherent way. The book is divided in parts on distributed algorithms, systems architecture, applications support, & case studies

This book documents the main results developed in the course of the European project Basic Research on Advanced Distributed Computing: From Algorithms to Systems (BROADCAST). Eight major European research groups in distributed computing cooporated on this projects, from 1992 to 1999. The 21 thoroughly cross-reviewed final full papers present the state-of-the art results on distributed systems in a coherent way. The book is divided in parts on distributed algorithms, systems architecture, applications support, and case studies.

This chapter gives an account of recent advances with regard to both the analysis and the use of time in distributed systems models and algorithms.