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Distributed Systems Assignment

Structured naming systems allow entities to be referred to using human-readable names organized in a hierarchical manner, like file system paths or domain names. Attribute-based naming instead describes entities as collections of attribute-value pairs to enable more flexible searching and filtering. Both approaches have advantages for distributed systems, with structured naming providing simplicity and attribute-based naming enabling powerful queries.

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111 views

Distributed Systems Assignment

Structured naming systems allow entities to be referred to using human-readable names organized in a hierarchical manner, like file system paths or domain names. Attribute-based naming instead describes entities as collections of attribute-value pairs to enable more flexible searching and filtering. Both approaches have advantages for distributed systems, with structured naming providing simplicity and attribute-based naming enabling powerful queries.

Uploaded by

Daniel
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Discuss structured naming and attribute-based naming in distributed systems

INTRODUCTION:

 A naming system is a connected set of contexts of the same type (they have the same
naming convention) and provides a common set of operations. For example, a system that
implements the DNS is a naming system. A system that communicates using the Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is a naming system.
 Names are used to refer to entities, locations, resources and more. We need to resolve a
name to the entity it refers to. The naming system may be itself be implemented in a
distributed fashion.
 A naming system provides a naming service to its customers for performing naming-related
operations. A naming service is accessed through its own interface. For example, the DNS
offers a naming service that maps machine names to IP addresses.
 The LDAP offers a naming service that maps LDAP names to LDAP entries. A file system
offers a naming service that maps filenames to files and directories.

Types of Naming Systems

1. Attribute-Based Naming
 Attribute-based naming allows an entity to be described by (attribute, value) pairs. This
allows a user to search more effectively by constraining some of the attributes.
 Attribute-based naming systems are also known as directory services. Resources are
described as triplets consisting of a subject, predicate and an object. E.g. (person, name,
Alice) However, location independence and human friendliness are not the only criterion for
naming entities.
 In particular, as more information is being made available it becomes important to
effectively search for entities. This approach requires that a user can provide merely a
description of what he is looking for.
 There are many ways in which descriptions can be provided, but a popular one in distributed
systems is to describe an entity in terms of (attribute, value) pairs, generally referred to as
attribute-based naming. In this approach, an entity is assumed to have an associated
collection of attributes. Each attribute says something about that entity.
 By specifying which values a specific attribute should have, a user essentially constrains the
set of entities that he is interested in. It is up to the naming system to return one or more
entities that meet the user's description. In this section we take a closer look at attribute-
based naming systems.
 Attribute-based naming systems are also known as directory services, whereas systems that
support structured naming are generally called naming systems. With directory services,
entities have a set of associated attributes that can be used for searching.
 In some cases, the choice of attributes can be relatively simple. For example, in an e-mail
system, messages can be tagged with attributes for the sender, recipient, subject, and so on.

 However, even in the case of e-mail, matters become difficult when other types of
descriptors are needed, as is illustrated by the difficulty of developing filters that will allow
only certain messages (based on their descriptors) to be passed through.

Advantages of attribute-based naming


 Provide a unique and location-independent way of referring to entities.
 Describe an entity in terms of (attribute, value) pairs in a distributed system.
 Identify an entity merely by a description.
 Lookup operations can be extremely expensive, as they require to match requested attribute
values, against actual attribute values.
 Implement basic directory service as database, and combine with traditional structured
naming system.
 Attribute-based naming is a naming system in a distributed system.
  location independence and human friendliness are not the only criterion for naming
entities.
 It is much more convenient to name, and look up entities by means of their attributes.
2. Structured Naming
 Structured naming is composed of simple human-readable names. Examples are file system
naming and host naming on the Internet.

 Flat names are good for machines, but are generally not very convenient for humans to use.
As an alternative, naming systems generally support structured names that are composed
from simple, human-readable names. Not only file naming, but also host naming on the
Internet follow this approach. In this section, we concentrate on structured names and the
way that these names are resolved to addresses.

Advantages of structured naming


 Flat names are not convenient for humans to use.
 Structured names are often organized into what is called a name space.
 Simplifies the design and the development of distributed applications.
 Naming systems generally support structured names that are composed from simple,
human-readable names.
 They are used to share resources, to uniquely identify entities, to refer to locations, and
more. 
 Name spaces for structured names can be represented as a labeled, directed graph with two
types of nodes.
 Structured naming composed of simple human-readable names. Examples are file system
naming and host naming on the Internet.

Disadvantages of structured naming


 It is difficult to provide adequate security in distributed systems because the nodes as well
as the connections need to be secured.
 Some messages and data can be lost in the network while moving from one node to
another.
 The database connected to the distributed systems is quite complicated and difficult to
handle as compared to a single user system.
 Overloading may occur in the network if all the nodes of the distributed system try to send
data at once.

3. Flat naming: The identifier is simply a random bit string. It does not contain any information
whatsoever on how to locate an access point of its associated entity. Good for machines.
An important property of such a name is that it does not contain any information or
whatsoever on how to locate the access point of its associated entity.

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