ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses applications of distributed systems in operating systems, file systems, shared memory systems, database systems, and heterogeneous computing systems. There are a number of advantageous features which motivate research in the areas of network operating systems and distributed operating systems. Distributed operating systems turn the entire collection of hardware and software into a single integrated system, like a traditional time sharing system. A microkernel operating system provides a structure defined to cope with the increased complexity of operating system development for distributed systems. Two types of parallel/distributed systems have been popular: tightly coupled systems and loosely coupled systems. A tightly coupled system is more straightforward to program because it is a natural extension of a single-processor system. Loosely coupled systems include both networks of workstations and multicomputers without shared memory. There are two types of distributed manager algorithms: the fixed and the broadcast.
