Introduction to Reliable Distributed Programming

16In modern computing, a program usually executes on several processes. The fundamental problem when devising algorithms for distributed computing is the need to achieve some form of cooperation of these processes on a common task.Guerraoui and Rodrigues present an introductory description of distributed programming abstractions and of the algorithms used to implement them in different distributed environments. They follow an incremental approach by first introducing basic elements of distributed computing, on top of which they then build more sophisticated abstractions. After the introduction, every chapter is devoted to one problem class, covering reliable delivery, shared memory, broadcast, commitment, and communication.This textbook comes with a companion set of running examples implemented in Java, which can be used by students to get a better understanding of many implementation details. All chapters together make up for a full course on distributed computing. In addition,16 the book can also be used as a complete reference of the basic building blocks for reliable distributed applications.02Rachid Guerraoui is Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (LPD), at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland.