Distributed Systems (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Best book on Disributed Systems Principles and Architecture
Review: Distributed Systems (2nd Edition) by Sape Mullender is easily the best book available on Distributed Systems. Many authors, yet so coherent and authoritive and well written. Makes reasonably easy yet rigorous reading. It is about 10 years old, but still very up-to-date in terms of principles. For more up-to-date other (also very good) alternatives see either or both of:

1. Distributed Systems - Couloris

OR

2. Distributed Systems - A. Tanenbaum

These are not nearly as deep as Sape Mullender, but quite thorough. Mullender covers distributed real time systems better (given short shrift by the others) and is more rigorous. But due to its age Mullender has hardly any coverage of distributed object middleware (e.g. DCOM, CORBA, RMI) and multi-media systems.

To get or good handle or distrbuted systems design or research however you also need a distrbuted algorithms text. You may want to search on the following authors:

Vijay Garg, Gerard Tel, Nancy Lynch.

Gerard Tel's is the most thorough in terms of problem/topic coverage and mots intuitive. But if you want a very easy to read book, non too mathematical with algorithms in a real programming language (JAVA) to adapt to build your own Distrbuted Software choose: Gerard Tel's Concurrent and Distributed Computing in Java which covers both Concurrent and Distributed Programming algorithms in Java.

Another important book which looks at distributed systems from a thorough, modern distributed objects point of view is 'Engineering Distributed Objects' by Wollgang Emmerich. It covers the distributed objects middleware raison d'etre, principles, and the Java RMI, CORBA and DCOM/COM+ approaches and architectures in an excellent, readable fashion.