Distributed Computing Books

A very good book. It describes a formal approach called Seuss to design and reason about distributed programs. As a formalism Seuss is abstract, hence allows us to focus reasoning at the important issues in distributed programming. It features OO-like structures so that one has the mechanism to construct large systems from smaller components.

Unlike conference proceeding, this book is a collection of papers that were presented at a Workshop, which are usually shorter in length and more focused on a specific area. This Workshop, 4th Austrian-Hungarian Workshop on Distributed and Parallel Systems, covered four specific, and yet very important aspects of Distributed and Parallel Computing:
1) Tools and techniques in Cluster Computing, which covered Load Balancing techniques, tools used for simulation and performance prediction, management tools used for abstraction of the underlying infrastructure
2) Global Grid Computing, which covered topics that concern large Grid management and Load Balancing in global Grids, dynamic resource discovery techniques and virtualization of resources to represent the user with a Single System Image (SSI)
3) Parallel Software Development techniques and tools, which covered the latest trends and available tools for developing applications for the gird, architectural techniques for caching, debugging techniques to shorten development time, and testing and deployment ideas for large grids.
4) Dependable and Fault-Tolerant Systems, which covered topics such as fault-tolerant techniques for storage systems, getting around the unpredictability of creating a fault tolerance distributed and parallel system, and failure detection and recovery techniques

As mentioned, the book/workshop does not try to cover everything under the sun, but what it does cover; it does so with applicable, useful and relevant papers. The researchers are basically presenting their own experiences and best-practices to the readers.

Even though the topics presented are academic for the most part, there are a number of ideas, techniques and tools that the reader can take away. One such tool is P-GRADE. There are three papers covering this tool in this book: two on load-balancing and one in software development and engineering. P-GRADE is a graphical tool that provides programming environment for developing parallel applications using graphical representation for communication, etc... It also has a number of tools for debugging, monitoring and visualization. The tool takes the graphical representation of your application, and develops C code for it, which could be compiled for any system. It is an open-source, free software and it is getting plenty of attention in Europe. The tool makes the complex task of developing software for a Grid Environment simpler, and even though it does not literally write the code for you, it will assist you where it can such as easing the pain of network programming and communication.

I highly recommend this book for architects, researches, professionals interested in papers that are not entirely research-based and there are applicable techniques that can be learned from them.

Client/server and distributed computing is of critical importance to any organisations effective us of Information Technology. This importance has only been heightened by the explosive growth of the Internet. This book very clearly introduces the main concepts and issues with distributed computing and it then presents an architectural approach for addressing those issues. The architecture presented covers both new and legacy systems and also the range of distribution approaches from request/reply, through messaging to object-oriented. The major conclusion of the book is the importance of federated architectures and the issues and opportunities available through implementing such an approach. As someone who has worked in this area for many years I found the book very useful, informative, and immediately applicable to current problems I am working on. The material is well illustrated with many practical examples and realistic case studies, including a chapter describing a similar approach independently implemented by a large bank. The book also includes an appendix listing major vendors and products that are relevant to distributed computing architectures. For any organisations looking to implement, exploit, or extend their distributed computing systems this book is a very important study of the area and offers a real-life solution for many of the issues. For anyone just wanting to learn about distributed computing I would also recommend this book to them.

I was amazed with this title. A very comprehensive selection of articles on DSM, giving the reader an inside look to the state of the art of distributed memory. Very good editors introductions to chapters, explaining the articles by other authors.

The only problem is that the book does not mention the articles published after 1997. But comprehensive discussion helped me understand later research.

Distributed Systems (2nd Edition) by Sape Mullender is easily the best book available on Distributed Systems. Many authors, yet so coherent and authoritive and well written. Makes reasonably easy yet rigorous reading. It is about 10 years old, but still very up-to-date in terms of principles. For more up-to-date other (also very good) alternatives see either or both of:

1. Distributed Systems - Couloris

OR

2. Distributed Systems - A. Tanenbaum

These are not nearly as deep as Sape Mullender, but quite thorough. Mullender covers distributed real time systems better (given short shrift by the others) and is more rigorous. But due to its age Mullender has hardly any coverage of distributed object middleware (e.g. DCOM, CORBA, RMI) and multi-media systems.

To get or good handle or distrbuted systems design or research however you also need a distrbuted algorithms text. You may want to search on the following authors:

Vijay Garg, Gerard Tel, Nancy Lynch.

Gerard Tel's is the most thorough in terms of problem/topic coverage and mots intuitive. But if you want a very easy to read book, non too mathematical with algorithms in a real programming language (JAVA) to adapt to build your own Distrbuted Software choose: Vijay Garg's Concurrent and Distributed Computing in Java which covers both Concurrent and Distributed Programming algorithms in Java.

Another important book which looks at distributed systems from a thorough, modern distributed objects point of view is 'Engineering Distributed Objects' by Wollgang Emmerich. It covers the distributed objects middleware raison d'etre, principles, and the Java RMI, CORBA and DCOM/COM+ approaches and architectures in an excellent, readable fashion.

I have been teaching distributed systems and distributed algorithms related courses at graduate level for over 15 years and it is the first time I have come across a book of a favorable context, right measure and length on this topic. This is a formal book on distributed systems using distributed algorithms approach yet it has a lot of practical concern. It is very concise, right up to the point, says it all but not a single sentence more. It uses a very much different style than its rivals which at one extreme are very verbal at systems and protocols level rather than algorithmic level; and very mathematical with hard to follow proofs at the other. Algorithms are presented in a simple style along with short and sound proofs in this book which makes it very comfortable to follow.

The only criticism I have is that if the graph algorithms part could be extended a bit more to include distributed DFS, BFS algorithms along with distributed independent set and dominating set algorithms, it would reflect the current trends in distributed systems more.
Nevertheless, I think this is the best currently available book on distributed algorithms. After purchasing this book slightly after the beginning of the semester, I ended up modifying all my notes for a current distributed algorithms course to reflect the contents of this book.

"The Place of Face-to-Face Communication in Distributed Work"
Bonnie A. Nardi, Agilent Technologies; Steve Whittaker, AT&T Labs-Research

This chapter is significant. There is a wealth of knowledge and understanding that can be brought to on-line business collaboration from fields like anthropology. This is particularly important given the notable failure of many on-line collaboration efforts.

What intrigues me about the work are the larger questions that emerge - what does this mean for the meaning and quality of business life, the effectiveness of on-line work, work/life balance, alienation/mental health, etc. For example, what will the quality of our ideas be like is we work more and more on-line? If we work in isolated, on-line environments how does this impact our need to "be" as social beings and learn informally with others around the coffee pot? What if the on-line "coffee pot" can never be as rich as the real thing?

I just read this booklet and found it to be very beneficial. The author has a very straightforward style of presenting the essential concepts without wasting the reader's time. The first chapter of this 5 chapter booklet gives an incredibly well rounded discussion of ebusiness management in terms of the typical planning, organizating, staffing, monitoring and control activities. My favourite is the second chapter that gives a really good coverage of "management platforms" that support the FCAPS (fault, capacity, accounting, performance and security) in modern environments. Although I have been in the industry for almost 20 years and had heard of Netview, Tivoli, Opeenview and other such things, I never quite understood what are all these things and what do they have to do with management. This chapter alone is worth the cost (only $18) of this booklet. The next 2 chapters on security are equally good. They cover security management and organizational issues, discuss the core security technologies, and then show how this fits in to secure all the IT assets -- starting from network links to corporate databases and web transactions. The security design procedure with attack trees is just wwonderful. The final chapter gives a good scan of state of the practice, market, and art. Beautifully done!

What is the Internet? How does it work? Why is it so important? These questions can be very confusing to someone without a computer science or IT background. After reading this Networks module, I feel I finally have a very good understanding of the power of the IP networks. I highly recommend this module to anyone with an iota of curiosity about the Internet.

Although it's not breezy reading, even as a business school student I had little trouble with the technical explanations. Dr. Umar uses real-world examples. In fact, the information is so practical that now I know the actual meaning behind terms such as Ethernet, LAN's, WAN's, MAN's, NIC, RJ45, cable modems, DSL, T1, T3, optical fiber, ATM Frame relay, etc. The module also covers Voice Over IP and the inevitable convergence of voice and data - no wonder phone companies are running scared. In addition, wireless technologies, cellular phones and 3G are also addressed.

I was mostly interested in distributed networks but the module also covered IBM's SNA and token ring networks reflecting Dr. Umar's experience with Big Blue's "big iron" mainframes. Nonetheless, it was still valuable information.

"This volume presents the proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Graph-Theoretic Concepts in Computer Science (WG4), held in Herrsching, Germany in June 1994. The volume contains 32 thoroughly revised papers selected from 66 submissions and provides an up-to-date snapshot of the research performed in the field. The topics addressed are graphs grammars, treewidth, special graph classes, algorithms on graphs, broadcasting and architecture, planar graphs and related problems, and special graph problems." Springer