Distributed Computing Paradigms

Mei-Ling Liu

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M. Liu
Paradigms for Distributed Applications
Paradigm means “a pattern, example, or model.” In the study of
any subject of great complexity, it is useful to identify the basic
patterns or models, and classify the detail according to these
models. This paper aims to present a classification of the
paradigms for distributed applications.
Characteristics that distinguish distributed applications from
conventional applications which run on a single machine. These
characteristics are:
 Interprocess communication: A distributed application require

the participation of two or more independent entities

(processes). To do so, the processes must have the ability to
exchange data among themselves.
 Event synchronization: In a distributed application, the

sending and receiving of data among the participants of a

distributed application must be synchronized.

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Abstractions
Arguably the most fundamental concept in computer science,
abstraction is the idea of detail hiding. To quote David J. Barnes1:
We often use abstraction when it is not necessary to know the
exact details of how something works or is represented, because
we can still make use of it in its simplified form. Getting
involved with the detail often tends to obscure what we are trying
to understand, rather than illuminate it … Abstraction plays a
very important role in programming because we often want to
model, in software, simplified versions of things that exist in the
real world … without having to build the real things.
In software engineering, abstraction is realized with the provision
of tools or facilities which allow software to be built without the
developer having to be cognizant of some of the underlying
complexities.

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Distributed Application Paradigms

le ve l o f ab str ac tio n
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The Message Passing Paradigm
Message passing is the most fundamental paradigm for
distributed applications.
 A process sends a message representing a request.

 The message is delivered to a receiver, which

processes the request, and sends a message in

response.
 In turn, the reply may trigger a further request,

which leads to a subsequent reply, and so forth. The

message-

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The Message Passing Paradigm - 2
 Message passing is the most fundamental paradigm for distributed
applications.
A process sends a message representing a request.
The message is delivered to a receiver, which processes the
request, and sends a message in response.
In turn, the reply may trigger a further request, which leads to a
subsequent reply, and so forth. -

Process A
Process B

a m essage

M e s s a g e p a s s in g
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The Message Passing Paradigm - 3
The basic operations required to support the basic message
passing paradigm are send, and receive.
For connection-oriented communication, the operations connect
and disconnect are also required.
With the abstraction provided by this model, the interconnected
processes perform input and output to each other, in a manner
similar to file I/O. The I/O operations encapsulate the detail of
network communication at the operating-system level.
The socket application programming interface is based on this
paradigm.
 http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/1.2/docs/api/index.html

 http://www.sockets.com/

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The Client-Server Paradigm
Perhaps the best known paradigm for network applications, the client-
server2 model assigns asymmetric roles to two collaborating
processes.
One process, the server, plays the role of a service provider which waits
passively for the arrival of requests. The other, the client, issues
specific requests to the server and awaits its response.  

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...

T h e C lie n t-S e r ve r P ar ad ig m , c o n c e p tu al

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The Client-Server Paradigm - 2
Simple in concept, the client-server model provides an efficient
abstraction for the delivery of network services.
Operations required include those for a server process to listen and to
accept requests, and for a client process to issue requests and accept
responses.
By assigning asymmetric roles to the two sides, event synchronization
is simplified: the server process waits for requests, and the client in
turn waits for responses.
 Many Internet services are client-server applications. These services
are often known by the protocol that the application implements. Well
known Internet services include HTTP, FTP, DNS, finger, gopher, etc.

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The Peer-to-Peer System Architecture
http://www.peer-to-peerwg.org/whatis/index.html

In system architecture and networks, peer-to-peer

is an architecture where computer resources and
services are direct exchanged between computer
systems.
These resources and services include the exchange
of information, processing cycles, cache storage,
and disk storage for files..
In such an architecture, computers that have
traditionally been used solely as clients
communicate directly among themselves and can
act as both clients and servers, assuming whatever
role is most efficient for the network.

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The Peer-to-Peer Distributed Computing Paradigm
In the peer-to-peer paradigm, the participating processes play equal
roles, with equivalent capabilities and responsibilities (hence the term
“peer”). Each participant may issue a request to another participant
and receive a response.

proce ss 1

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proce ss 2

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Peer-to-Peer distributed computing
Whereas the client-server paradigm is an ideal model for a
centralized network service, the peer-to-peer paradigm is
more appropriate for applications such as instant
messaging, peer-to-peer file transfers, video conferencing,
and collaborative work. It is also possible for an
application to be based on both the client-server model and
the peer-to-peer model.

A well-known example of a peer-to-peer file transfer

service is Napster.com or similar sites which allow files
(primarily audio files) to be transmitted among computers
on the Internet. It makes use of a server for directory in
addition to the peer-to-peer computing.

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Peer-to-Peer distributed computing
 The peer-to-peer paradigm can be implemented with
facilities using any tool that provide message-passing, or
with a higher-level tool such as one that supports the point-
to-point model of the Message System paradigm.
For web applications, the web agent is a protocol promoted
by the XNSORG (the XNS Public Trust Organization) for
peer-to-peer interprocess communication
“Project JXTA is a set of open, generalized peer-to-peer
protocols that allow any connected device (cell phone, to
PDA, PC to server) on the network to communicate and
collaborate. JXTA is short for Juxtapose, as in side by side.
It is a recognition that peer to peer is juxtapose to client
server or Web based computing -- what is considered
today's traditional computing model. “

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The Message System Paradigm
The Message System or Message-Oriented Middleware (MOM) paradigm is an
elaboration of the basic message-passing paradigm.
In this paradigm, a message system serves as an intermediary among separate,
independent processes.
The message system acts as a switch for messages, through which processes exchange
messages asynchronously, in a decoupled manner.
A sender deposits a message with the message system, which forwards it to a message
queue associated with each receiver. Once a message is sent, the sender is free to move
on to other tasks.

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...

...

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Two subtypes of message system models
  The Point-To-Point Message Model
In this model, a message system forwards a message from the sender
to the receiver’s message queue. Unlike the basic message passing
model, the middleware provides a message depository, and allows the
sending and the receiving to be decoupled. Via the middleware, a
sender deposits a message in the message queue of the receiving
process. A receiving process extracts the messages from its message
queue, and handles each one accordingly.
Compared to the basic message-passing model, this paradigm provides
the additional abstraction for asynchronous operations. To achieve the
same effect with basic message-passing, a developer will have to make
use of threads or child processes.

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The Publish/Subscribe Message Model
In this model, each message is associated with a specific
topic or event. Applications interested in he
occurrence of a specific event may subscribe to
messages for that event. When the awaited event
occurs, the process publishes a message announcing the
event or topic. The middleware message system
distributes the message to all its subscribers.
The publish/subscribe message model offers a powerful
abstraction for multicasting or group communication.
The publish operation allows a process to multicast to a
group of processes, and the subscribe operation allows a
process to listen for such multicast.

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Toolkits based on the Message-System Paradigm

The MOM paradigm has had a long history in distributed

applications.
Message Queue Services (MQS) have been in use since the 1980’s.
The IBM MQ*Series6 is an example of such a facility.
http://www-4.ibm.com/software/ts/mqseries/
Other existing support for this paradigm are
 Microsoft’s Message Queue (MSQ),

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/psdk/msmq/msmq_overvie
w_4ilh.htm
 Java’s Message Service
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles
/Networking/messaging/
 

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 Remote Procedure Call
As applications grew increasingly complex, it became desirable to
have a paradigm which allows distributed software to be
programmed in a manner similar to conventional applications
which run on a single processor.
The Remote Procedure Call (RPC) model provides such an
abstraction. Using this model, interprocess communications
proceed as procedure, or function, calls, which are familiar to
application programmers.
A remote procedure call involves two independent processes,
which may reside on separate machines. A process, A, wishing to
make a request to another process, B, issues a procedure call to B,
passing with the call a list of argument values. As in the case of
local procedure calls, a remote procedure call triggers a
predefined action in a procedure provided by process B. At the
completion of the procedure, process B returns a value to process
A.

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 Remote Procedure Call - 2

P roce ss B
P roce ss A

p ro c 1 (arg 1 , arg 2 )

p ro c 2 (arg 1 )

p ro c 3 (a rg 1 ,a rg 2 ,a rg 3 )

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 Remote Procedure Call - 3
RPC allows programmers to build network applications using a
programming construct similar to the local procedure call,
providing a convenient abstraction for both interprocess
communication and event synchronization.
Since its introduction in the early 1980s, the Remote Procedure
Call model has been widely in use in network applications.
There are two prevalent APIs for Remote Procedure Calls.
 The Open Network Computing Remote Procedure Call, evolved
from the RPC API originated from Sun Microsystems in the
early 1980s.
 The Open Group Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)

RPC.
Both APIs provide a tool, rpcgen, for transforming remote
procedure calls to local procedure calls to the stub.
 

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 The Distributed Objects Paradigms
The idea of applying object orientation to distributed
applications is a natural extension of object-oriented
software development.
Applications access objects distributed over a network.
Objects provide methods, through the invocation of
which an application obtains access to services.
 Object-oriented paradigms include:
 Remote method invocation (RMI)

 Network services

 Object request broker

 Object spaces

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 Remote Method Invocation (RMI)
Remote method invocation is the object-oriented equivalent of remote
method calls.
In this model, a process invokes the methods in an object, which may
reside in a remote host.
As with RPC, arguments may be passed with the invocation.

P rocess 2
P rocess 1
r e m o te m e th o d in v o c a tio n m e th o d1
m e th o d2

a r e m o t e o b je c t

T h e R e m o te M e th o d C all P ar ad ig m

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 The Network Services Paradigm
In this paradigm, service providers register themselves with directory servers
on a network. A process desiring a particular service contacts the directory
server at run time, and, if the service is available, will be provided a reference
to the service. Using the reference, the process interacts with the service.
This paradigm is essentially an extension of the remote method call paradigm.
The difference is that service objects are registered with a global directory
service, allowing them to be look up and accessed by service requestors on a
federated network.
Java’s Jini12 technology is based on this paradigm.
D ir e c to r y s e r v ic e

s e r v ic e o b je c t

S e r v ic e r e q u e s to r

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The Object Request broker Paradigm
In the object broker paradigm , an application issues requests to an object
request broker (ORB), which directs the request to an appropriate object
that provides the desired service.
The paradigm closely resembles the remote method invocation model in
its support for remote object access. The difference is that the object
request broker in this paradigm functions as a middleware which allows
an application, as an object requestor, to potentially access multiple
remote (or local) objects.
The request broker may also function as an mediator for heterogeneous
objects, allowing interactions among objects implemented using different
APIs and /or running on different platforms.

O b je c t
O b je c t
R e qu e sto r

O b je c t R e q u e s t B r o k e r

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The Object Request broker Paradigm - 2
This paradigm is the basis of the Object Management Group’s
CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture)
architecture.
http://www.corba.org/
Tool kits based on the architecture include:
 Inprise’s Visibroker http://www.inprise.com/visibroker/
 Java’s Interface Development Language (Java IDL)
http://java.sun.com/products/jdk/idl/
 Orbix’s IONA, and TAO from the Object Computing, Inc.
http://www.corba.org/vendors/pages/iona.html

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 The Object Space Paradigm
Perhaps the most abstract of the object-oriented paradigms, the
object space paradigm assumes the existence of logical entities
known as object spaces.
The participants of an application converge in a common object
space.
A provider places objects as entries into an object space, and
requesters who subscribe to the space access the entries.

re qu e stor p r o v id e r

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 The Object Space Paradigm - 2

In addition to the abstractions provided by other

paradigms, the object space paradigm provides a
virtual space or meeting room among provides and
requesters of network resources or objects. This
abstraction hides the detail involved in resource or
object lookup needed in paradigms such as remote
method invocation, object request broker, or network
services.
Current facilities based on this paradigm include
JavaSpaces
http://java.sun.com/products/javaspaces/.

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 Component-based Technologies
Component-based technologies such as Microsoft’s COM,
Microsoft DCOM, Java Bean, and Enterprise Java Bean are also
based on distributed-object paradigms, as components are
essentially specialized, packaged objects designed to interact with
each other through standardized interfaces.
In addition, application servers, popular for enterprise
applications, are middleware facilities which provide access to
objects or components.
IBM’s WebSphere,
http://www.as400.ibm.com/products/websphere/docs/as400v35/doc
s/admover.html

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 The Mobile Agent Paradigm
A mobile agent is a transportable program or object.
In this model, an agent is launched from an originating host.
The agent travels from host to host according to an itinerary that
it carries.
At each stop, the agent accesses the necessary resources or
services, and performs the necessary tasks to accomplish its
mission. H ost 2

H ost 1

Host 3
agent

Host 4

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 The Mobile Agent Paradigm - 2
The paradigm offers the abstraction for a transportable program
or object.
In lieu of message exchanges, data is carried by the
program/object as the program is transported among the
participants.
 Commercial packages which support the mobile agent paradigm
include:
 Mitsubishi Electric ITA’s Concordia system

http://www.meitca
.com/HSL/Projects/Concordia/Welcome.html
IBM’s Aglet system.
  http://www.trl.ibm.co.jp/aglets/

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 The Collaborative Application
(Groupware) Paradigm
In this model, processes participate in a collaborative session as a group.
Each participating process may contribute input to part or all of the
group.
Processes may do so using:
 multicasting to send data to all or part of the group, or they may use
a
 virtual sketchpads or whiteboards which allows each participant to

read and write data to a shared display.

m essage

m essage

m essage

M e s s a g e -b a s e d g r o u p w a r e p a r a d ig m W h it e b o a r d - b a s e d g r o u p w a r e p a r a d ig m

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Summary - 1
We have looked at a wide range of paradigms for
distributed applications.
The paradigms presented were:
 Message passing
 Client-server
 Message system: Point-to-point; Publish/Subscribe
 Distributed objects:
 Remote method invocation
 Object request broker
 Object space
 Mobile agents
 Network services
 Collaborative applications

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Summary - 2
To varying degrees, these paradigm provide abstractions
that insulate the developers from the detail of interprocess
communication and event synchronization, allowing the
programmer to concentrate on the bigger picture of the
application itself.
In choosing a paradigm or a tool for an application, there
are tradeoffs that should be considered, including
overheads, scalability, cross-platform support, and
software engineering issues.

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