Operating Systems: Concurrent and Distributed Software Design

16.6. Distributed programming paradigms

16.6.1. Synchronous and asynchronous communication

An advantage of the asynchronous communication style is that when a process makes a remote service request it is not blocked, but it can continue with other processing in parallel until it requires a reply message. A disadvantage of this style of communication is that it is difficult to get right, and prone to errors especially when implemented above connectionless communication, unlike the above example. In the following sections we will discuss synchronous communication, where the process that invokes the method is blocked, as in a local method invocation. This is generally considered to be easier to use as it is at a higher level of abstraction, akin ...