Introduction to

Distributed Systems

Slides for CSCI 3171 Lectures

E. W. Grundke
 References
A. Tanenbaum and M. van Steen (TvS)
Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms
Prentice-Hall 2002

G. Coulouris, J. Dollimore and T. Kindberg (CDK)

Distributed System: Concepts and Design
Addison-Wesley 2001
Acknowledgment: Some slides from
TvS: http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/esm/app/author_tanenbaum/custom/dist_sys_1e/
CDK: http://www.cdk3.net/ig/beida/index.html

2
 What is a Distributed System?

A collection of independent computers that appears to its

users as a single coherent system.

Examples:
Distributed object-based systems (CORBA, DCOM)
Distributed file systems (NFS)
etc.

TvS 1.2 3
 Heterogeneity
Applies to all of the following:
– networks
• Internet protocols mask the differences between networks
– computer hardware
• e.g. data types such as integers can be represented differently
– operating systems
• e.g. the API to IP differs from one OS to another
– programming languages
• data structures (arrays, records) can be represented differently
– implementations by different developers
• they need agreed standards so as to be able to interwork

CDK Ch. 1.4 4

 Transparency in a Distributed System
Transparency Description
Hide differences in data representation and how a
Access
resource is accessed
Location Hide where a resource is located
Migration Hide that a resource may move to another location
Hide that a resource may be moved to another
Relocation
location while in use
Hide that a resource may be shared by several
Replication
competitive users
Hide that a resource may be shared by several
Concurrency
competitive users
Failure Hide the failure and recovery of a resource
Hide whether a (software) resource is in memory or
Persistence
on disk

Different forms of transparency in a distributed system.

TvS 1.4 5
 Layered Protocols: IP
Layers, interfaces, and protocols in the OSI model.

6
 Layered Protocols: OSI
Layers, interfaces, and protocols in the OSI model.

2-1

TvS 2.2 7
 Middleware Protocols

2-5

An adapted reference model for networked communication.

TvS 2.6 8
 Middleware
A software layer that
– masks the heterogeneity of systems
– provides a convenient programming abstraction
– provides protocols for providing general-purpose services
to more specific applications, eg.
• authentication protocols
• authorization protocols
• distributed commit protocols
• distributed locking protocols
• high-level communication protocols
– remote procedure calls (RPC)
– remote method invocation (RMI)

9
 Middleware
General structure of a distributed system as middleware.

1-22

TvS 1.24 10
 Middleware and Openness

1.23

In an open middleware-based distributed system, the protocols used by each

middleware layer should be the same, as well as the interfaces they offer to
applications.

TvS 1.25 11
 Middleware programming models
Remote Calls
– remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
– distributed objects and Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
• eg. Java RMI
Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA)
– cross-language RMI
Other programming models
– remote event notification
– remote SQL access
– distributed transaction processing

CDK Ch 1 12
 External Data Representation

See Coulouris, Dollimore and Kindberg (CDK),

Sec. 4.3
 Motivation
Data in running programs:
Not just primitives, but
arrays, pointers, lists, trees, etc.
In general:
complex graphs of interconnected structures or objects

Data being transmitted:

Sequential!
Pointers make no sense.
Structures must be flattened.

All the heterogeneities must be masked! (endian, binary formats,

etc.)

CDK 4.3 14
 Motivation
Data in running programs:
Not just primitives, but
arrays, pointers, lists, trees, etc.
In general:
complex graphs of interconnected structures or objects

Data being transmitted:

Sequential!
Pointers make no sense.
Structures must be flattened.

All the heterogeneities must be masked! (endian, binary formats,

etc.)

CDK 4.3 15
 What is an External Data Representation?
“An agreed standard for the representation of data structures and
primitive values.”

Internal to external: “marshalling”

External to internal: “unmarshalling”

Examples:
CORBA’s Common Data Representation (CDR)
Java Object Serialization
Sun XDR (RFC 1832)

16
 CORBA CDR
Defined in CORBA 2.0 in 1998
Primitive types:
Standard data types, both big/little endian, conversion by the
receiver.
Constructed types:
sequence, string, array, struct, enumerated, union
(not objects)
Data types are not specified in the external format: receiver is
assumed to have access to the definition (via IDL).
(unlike Java Object Serialization!)

CDK 4.3 17
CORBA CDR
– only defined in CORBA 2.0 in 1998, before that, each
implementation of CORBA had an external data
representation, but they could not generally work with one
another. That is:
• the heterogeneity of hardware was masked
• but not the heterogeneity due to different programmers
(until CORBA 2)
– CORBA CDR represents simple and constructed data types
(sequence, string, array, struct, enum and union)
• note that it does not deal with objects
– it requires an IDL specification of data to be serialised
CDK 4.3 18
 CORBA CDR Example
Index in sequence 4 bytes wide Notes
of bytes

0-3 5 Length of string

4-7 ”Smit” “Smith”
8-11 ”h____”
12-15 6 Length of string
16-19 ”Lond” “London”
20-23 ”on__”
24-27 1934 Unsigned long

The flattened form represents a Person struct with value:

{”Smith”, ”London”, 1934}

CDK 4.3 19
Remote Procedure Calls
(RPC)
 What is RPC?
Call a procedure (function, subroutine, method, …)
in a program
running on a remote machine,

while hiding communication details from the programmer.

Note: Think C, not java! We deal with objects later!

21
 Conventional Procedure Call

a) Parameter passing in a local procedure call: the stack before the call to read
b) The stack while the called procedure is active
TvS 2.7 22
 Parameter Passing Techniques
Call-by-value

Call-by-reference

Call-by-copy/restore

23
 Client and Server Stubs
Principle of RPC between a client and server program.

TvS 2.8 24
 Steps of a Remote Procedure Call
1. Client procedure calls client stub in normal way
2. Client stub builds message, calls local OS
3. Client's OS sends message to remote OS
4. Remote OS gives message to server stub
5. Server stub unpacks parameters, calls server
6. Server does work, returns result to the stub
7. Server stub packs it in message, calls local OS
8. Server's OS sends message to client's OS
9. Client's OS gives message to client stub
10. Stub unpacks result, returns to client

TvS 2.9 25
 Passing Value Parameters
Steps involved in doing remote computation through RPC

2-8

TvS 2.10 26
 Passing Value Parameters:
Data Representation Issues

a) Original message on the Pentium

b) The message after receipt on the SPARC
c) The message after being inverted. The little numbers in boxes indicate the
address of each byte

BUT: This is not usually a problem with strings! (E.W.G.)

TvS 2.11 27
Parameter Specification and Stub Generation

a) A procedure
b) The corresponding message.

TvS 2.12 28
 Passing Reference Parameters
Reference variables (pointers):
pointers to arrays
pointers to structures (objects without methods)

What if the structure contains other pointers?

The server may need a whole “graph” of structures!

“Parameter marshalling”

Interface Definition Language (IDL):

Specifies types, constants, procedures and
parameter data types,
compiled into client and server stubs.
29
 Asynchronous RPC

2-12

a) The interconnection between client and server in a traditional RPC

b) The interaction using asynchronous RPC

TvS 2.14 30
 Asynchronous RPC:
Deferred Synchronous RPC
A client and server interacting through two asynchronous RPCs

TvS 2.15 31
Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)
A middleware system
Developed by The Open Group (previously OSF)
Includes
distributed file service
directory service
security service
distributed time service
Adopted by Microsoft for distributed computing

32
 DCE: Binding a Client to a Server

2-15

TvS 2.17 33
Remote Method Invocation
(RMI)
 What is RMI?
RPC to a method in an object on another machine.

Note: Now think Java!

35
 Object Orientation:
Remote Method Invocation (RMI)

An object encapsulates
State (fields or instance variables)
Methods (often described by an interface)

Distributed object:
An interface known locally may describe an object on
another machine.

36
 Distributed Objects

Common organization of a remote object with client-side proxy.

2-16

TvS 2.18 37
 Binding a Client to an Object

Distr_object* obj_ref; //Declare a systemwide object reference

obj_ref = …;
obj_ref-> do_something();
(a)
Distr_object objPref;
Local_object* obj_ptr;
obj_ref = …;
obj_ptr = bind(obj_ref);
obj_ptr -> do_something();
(b)
// Initialize the reference to a distributed object
// Implicitly bind and invoke a method
//Declare a systemwide object reference
//Declare a pointer to local objects
//Initialize the reference to a distributed object
//Explicitly bind and obtain a pointer to the local proxy
//Invoke a method on the local proxy

a) An example with implicit binding using only global references

b) An example with explicit binding using global and local references

TvS 2.19 38
 Parameter Passing
The situation when passing an object by reference or by value.

2-18

TvS 2.20 39
 The DCE Distributed-Object Model
a) Distributed dynamic objects in DCE.
b) Distributed named objects

TvS 2.21 40