Distributed systems
Abstract
Nearly all large software systems are necessarily distributed. For example, enterprise-wide business systems must support multiple users running common applications across different sites. A distributed system encompasses these applications, their underlying support software, the hardware they run on, and the communication links which connect the distributed hardware. The largest and best-known distributed system is the set of computers, software, and services comprising the Internet/World Wide Web, which is so pervasive that it coexists with and connects to most other existing distributed systems. The most common distributed systems are networked client-server systems (see CLIENT-SERVER COMPUTING). This article surveys the properties of distributed systems and provides synopses of relevant research and development topics in theoretical foundations and system engineering.