Distributed Systems Foundations

This chapter discusses the foundations of distributed systems. It begins with defining distributed systems, and performing a review of the basic subjects re-garding distribution, such as computer networks, distributed operating systems and services. It introduces some generic formal notation to be used throughout the book in more elaborate treatments of some subjects. Distributed system architectures are discussed, namely: remote access; file and memory distribu-tion; client-server; thin clients and network computers; portable and mobile code; message-based architectures; mobile computing.