Communication Mechanisms for Programming Distributed Systems

A distributed processing system can be defined as a collection of distributed processing components physically and logically interconnected, possessing a decentralized system-wide resource control, and executing application programs in a coordinated manner. Communication mechanisms are discussed, taking into account synchronous communication, asynchronous communication, multiple senders and receivers, and combined communications. The use of specific language-based communication primitives is illustrated by considering example programs in detail. A PLITS solution to the bounded-buffer problem is described, and a CSP solution is examined.