High-Performance IT Services

Appendix V: Distributed Systems Topics

Introduction

Note: The purpose of this chapter is to outline ways in which disparate systems can cooperate in various ways—file transfer, program-to-program interaction, heterogeneous database access, and so on. This sort of interfacing will introduce resource overheads that can affect the performance of applications and other software being used.

Always remember that in choosing to use distributed processing, there are usability, manageability, security, and performance issues to consider as well as functionality ones. The words pilot system spring to mind in this context. In addition, a pilot can tell you whether a mix of products can work together in harmony—I know from personal experience on a PC that ...