Introduction to Distributed Systems
Stub. What a distributed system is and why we build them, examples, the important issues they raise, the common subproblems that recur across solutions, general implementation concerns, and how distributed systems differ from parallel systems.
The framing chapter: a distributed system is a collection of independent computers that appears to its users as a single coherent system, and every subsequent topic in the course is really an answer to one of a small set of recurring subproblems (agreement, ordering, mutual exclusion, replication, fault-tolerance) that show up in every distributed system regardless of its specific application. Also draws the line between “distributed” and merely “parallel” — the former assumes no shared memory and unreliable, asynchronous communication, which is what makes the rest of the course hard.
Outline (TODO — flesh out each)
- What is a distributed system?
- Why distributed systems?
- Examples of distributed systems
- Important issues in distributed systems
- Common subproblems
- Implementing a distributed system
- Parallel vs. distributed systems