Distributed Administrative Computing: Technical Issues

Abstract

A number of perspectives or dimensions are important to distributed data processing. To identify major technical issues, the following are significant: environment; function; equipment; software; "network" organization; support services; and quality factors. Only some aspects of the environment have technical impact on a distributed system. The environment sets the stage for the way in which function should be dispersed and the extent to which there are significant opportunities for replication of applications as well as function. On a case-by-case basis, distributed data processing must provide a range of functions and extend them ever closer to the end user: data entry; transaction processing; query; database/file; and maintenance. The overriding technical issues are upgradability and network standards including hardware components, protocols of various types, dictionaries, and so forth. The chapter highlights the central importance of network and data control as both a service and responsibility of the data processing group.