MCA-219
Distributed Systems
Many machines behaving as one — architectures and RPC, clocks and mutual exclusion, cloud, fog and edge computing, and distributed databases.
- Semester
- Semester 3
- Credits
- 3
- Scheme
- 3 lectures a week
- Contact hours
- 40 across four units
- Category
- Core Elective - II
What the paper is
Distributed Systems is the paper about what breaks when a system stops fitting on one machine. There is no shared clock, no shared memory and no reliable way to tell a slow node from a dead one, and every topic in the paper is a response to one of those three facts.
Unit II is the theoretical core and the most examined: logical clocks, mutual exclusion algorithms, election algorithms and distributed deadlock. These are the results that do not date, and they are asked as comparisons — message complexity, fault tolerance, and what each algorithm assumes.
Unit III is the modern half — cloud, fog and edge computing with IoT — and Unit IV returns to familiar ground with parallel and distributed databases, where the commit protocols and concurrency control follow directly from MCA-107 and MCA-108.
What to concentrate on
- Lamport's logical clocks and vector clocks are the foundation for everything in Unit II. Be able to annotate a message-passing diagram with both, because that is the standard question.
- Learn the mutual exclusion algorithms as a table: centralised, distributed, token ring, with messages per entry and behaviour on failure. The comparison is asked more often than any individual algorithm.
- Two-phase and three-phase commit are the highest-value topic in Unit IV, and they overlap with Advanced DBMS. Know exactly which failure three-phase commit fixes and at what cost.
Syllabus, unit by unit
Summarised from the approved scheme. Hours are the contact hours the scheme allots, which is a fair guide to where the marks sit.
Unit I · Distributed system fundamentals
10 hours- Goals and types of distributed system
- Architectures and fundamental models; object-based and service-oriented architecture
- Middleware, threads, clients, servers, code migration
- Types of communication, remote procedure call and remote method invocation
Unit II · Synchronisation and shared memory
10 hours- Clock synchronisation and logical clocks
- Mutual exclusion algorithms: centralised, decentralised, distributed and token ring; election algorithms
- Distributed deadlock detection and prevention
- Distributed shared memory; consistency models: strict and sequential consistency
- Page-based distributed shared memory: basic design and replication
Unit III · Cloud, fog and edge computing with IoT
10 hours- Distributed virtualisation: cloud, fog and edge computing
- IoT: applications, architecture, baseline technologies, connectivity technologies, internet-connected physical objects
- Fog computing: architecture, working and applications
- Edge computing: characteristics and attributes, benefits, collaboration with cloud computing, edge computing in IoT
Unit IV · Parallel and distributed databases
10 hours- Database system architecture, data partitioning and replication
- Distributed file systems and distributed query processing
- Parallel sort and parallel join
- Distributed transactions, commit protocols, concurrency control in distributed databases
How it is examined
- Question 1 is compulsory, covers the whole syllabus, and is made of objective or short-answer questions. It carries 12 marks.
- The rest of the paper is four units matching the four above. Each unit sets two questions and you attempt one, so there are four more answers at 12 marks each.
- Examiners are asked to map every question to a course outcome using Bloom's taxonomy, which is why questions are phrased as “apply”, “analyse” or “evaluate” rather than only “explain”.
The pass mark is 40 out of 100 in every paper.
Learning objectives
- Fundamentals and types of distributed systems
- Concepts of communication, synchronisation and resource allocation
- Basics of cloud, fog and edge computing and the Internet of Things
- Understanding parallel and distributed databases
Assumed beforehand
- Practical knowledge of computer networks
- Operating systems
- Database management systems
Paired in the scheme with MCA-265 Lab based on Core Elective II.
Books it is taught from
- TB1M. V. Steen and A. S. Tanenbaum, “Distributed Systems”, 3rd edition, 2017
- TB2Jeeva Jose, “Internet of Things”, Khanna Publication, 1st edition, 2019
- TB3A. Silberschatz, H. F. Korth and S. Sudarshan, “Database System Concepts”, 7th edition, 2020
- TB4A. S. Tanenbaum, “Distributed Operating Systems”, Pearson, 2012
Notes for MCA-219
Lecture notes, question papers and assignments filed against MCA-219 are in the library. Everything there has been checked by a moderator before it appears, and an account is free — new ones are approved by hand, which is what keeps the shelf clean.