Today, as Innokrea, we will talk a bit about what a distributed system is, what its properties are, and we will also see an example architecture of such a system. There are various definitions of what a distributed system actually is, ranging from formal and scientific to very practical ones. Some definitions indicate that a distributed system consists of many components or programs located on multiple nodes or computers.
Others, however, not only emphasize distribution but also, for example, that a distributed system should appear to the user as a coherent system, and that there are various planes of distribution.
However, certain attributes can be identified that characterize such software types, such as:. It should also be noted that not every distributed system fulfills all these characteristics. The three most important planes on which applications can be distributed are: processing, control, and data.
Depending on our requirements, we can manipulate the degree of distribution in these aspects. Processing distribution means that there are different computers connected to a network processing certain data, such as information retrieval or matrix multiplication.
Nodes receive part of a certain task and expedite its execution if parallel data processing is possible. An example here is databases, where problems with their replication and synchronization are properly resolved by database engines. As for control distribution, it involves transferring some control to another computer node. Examples could be a P2P network or a router, which makes routing decisions based on local information. Control over message passing is thus distributed.
