Introduction to Distributed-Software Engineering

Distributed-software is made up of a fixed set of software processes that are allocated to various interconnected computers but that closely cooperate to achieve a common goal. Interconnected computers are loosely coupled in the sense that interprocessor communication is done by message passing, not by sharing memory. Distributed-software engineering poses a host of new and challenging problems for software developers. This article addresses several of these problems, using the software life cycle as a guide.