The best approach is to by using legitimate copies, whether borrowed from a library or purchased as an e‑book.
M. L. Liu, whose full name is Mei-Ling L. Liu, is a Professor of Computer Science at the College of Engineering at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) in San Luis Obispo, California. Her deep experience teaching undergraduate students at Cal Poly for many years directly inspired and shaped the writing of this book. Its clear structure and practical, "hands-on" orientation are a direct reflection of her time in the classroom.
is a foundational textbook designed for undergraduate students, emphasizing a practical "how-to" approach to distributed programming. While complete PDF copies are generally restricted by copyright, you can access substantial excerpts, such as the first and second chapters on Scribd Core Principles & Content Overview
In a single computer, threads use mutexes to lock shared memory. In a distributed system, nodes must coordinate to ensure only one process accesses a critical resource at a time. Distributed mutual exclusion algorithms (like Token Ring or Ricart-Agrawala) manage this via network voting. Consensus and Fault Tolerance
The opening chapters lay the necessary foundation: The best approach is to by using legitimate
(shared‑memory vs. distributed‑memory)
Nodes communicate strictly by sending and receiving packets of data over a network. This paradigm requires explicit protocol definitions to handle data serialization and transmission errors. 3. Key Inter-Process Communication (IPC) Mechanisms
Every read receives the most recent write or an error.
Choosing between reliable, connection-oriented data streams (TCP) or fast, connectionless packets (UDP). 2. Distributed Objects and Paradigms Liu, whose full name is Mei-Ling L
: Libraries often provide access via platforms such as IEEE Xplore, ACM Digital Library, or Google Books for chapter previews and citations.
: Extends the object-oriented model to distributed systems, allowing objects on different nodes to interact via method calls (e.g., Java RMI , CORBA ) .
Sending data from one sender to one specific receiver using basic sockets (TCP/UDP).
Essential for exchanging structured information in the implementation of web services. World Wide Web (WWW): and stream-mode communication
Distributed computing refers to the practice of dividing computational tasks into smaller sub-tasks that can be executed concurrently on multiple computers or nodes. This approach enables the processing of large amounts of data, improves scalability, and increases fault tolerance.
At the heart of any distributed system is the ability for processes to talk to one another. Liu provides an in-depth look at socket APIs, datagrams, and stream-mode communication, which are the building blocks of network programming.
: An asymmetric model where a service provider (server) waits for requests from consumers (clients) .
: A Java-specific API for building distributed object applications, enabling remote method calls and "stub downloading" .