Java Distributed Computing

Chapter 1. Introduction

For the past decade, “distributed computing” has been one of the biggest buzz phrases in the computer industry. At this point in the information age, we know how to build networks; we use thousands of engineering workstations and personal computers to do our work, instead of huge behemoths in glass-walled rooms. Surely we ought to be able to use our networks of smaller computers to work together on larger tasks. And we do—an act as simple as reading a web page requires the cooperation of two computers (a client and a server) plus other computers that make sure the data gets from one location to the other. However, simple browsing (i.e., a largely one-way data exchange) isn’t what we usually mean when we talk about distributed computing. We usually mean something where there’s more interaction between the systems involved.

You can think about distributed computing in terms of breaking down an application into individual computing agents that can be distributed on a network of computers, yet still work together to do cooperative tasks. The motivations for distributing an application this way are many. Here are a few of the more common ones:

• Computing things in parallel by breaking a problem into smaller pieces enables you to solve larger problems without resorting to larger computers. Instead, you can use smaller, cheaper, easier-to-find computers.

• Large data sets are typically difficult to relocate, or easier to control and administer located where they are, ...