Module 6: Information

system and integration

CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS
We start with centralized systems because they are the
most intuitive and easy to understand and define.

Centralized systems are systems that use client/server

architecture where one or more client nodes are
directly connected to a central server. This is the most
commonly used type of system in many organizations
where client sends a request to a company server and
receives the response.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Example –
Wikipedia. Consider a massive server to which we send
our requests and the server responds with the article
that we requested. Suppose we enter the search term
‘junk food’ in the Wikipedia search bar. This search
term is sent as a request to the Wikipedia servers
(mostly located in Virginia, U.S.A) which then responds
back with the articles based on relevance. In this
situation, we are the client node, Wikipedia servers are
central server.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Characteristics of Centralized System –

Presence of a global clock: As the entire system

consists of a central node(a server/ a master) and many
client nodes(a computer/ a slave), all client nodes sync
up with the global clock(the clock of the central node).
One single central unit: One single central unit which
serves/coordinates all the other nodes in the system.
Dependent failure of components: Central node failure
causes entire system to fail. This makes sense because
when the server is down, no other entity is there to
send/receive response/requests.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Scaling –
Only vertical scaling on central server is possible. Horizontal
scaling will contradict the single central unit characteristic of
this system of a single central entity.

Components of Centralized System –

Components of Centralized System are,
 Node (Computer, Mobile, etc.).
 Server.
 Communication link (Cables, Wi-Fi, etc.).

Architecture of Centralized System –

Client-Server architecture. The central node that serves the
other nodes in the system is the server node and all the
other nodes are the client nodes.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Limitations of Centralized System –

Can’t scale up vertically after a certain limit – After a

limit, even if you increase the hardware and software
capabilities of the server node, the performance will not
increase appreciably leading to a benefit/cost ratio < 1.
Bottlenecks can appear when the traffic spikes – as the
server can only have a finite number of open ports to
which can listen to connections from client nodes. So,
when high traffic occurs like a shopping sale, the server
can essentially suffer a Denial-of-Service attack or
Distributed Denial-of-Service attack.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Advantages of Centralized System –

 Easy to physically secure. It is easy to secure and service the

server and client nodes by virtue of their location
 Smooth and elegant personal experience – A client has a
dedicated system which he uses(for example, a personal
computer) and the company has a similar system which can
be modified to suit custom needs
 Dedicated resources (memory, CPU cores, etc)
 More cost efficient for small systems upto a certain limit –
As the central systems take less funds to set up, they have
an edge when small systems have to be built
 Quick updates are possible – Only one machine to update.
 Easy detachment of a node from the system. Just remove
the connection of the client node from the server and Node
detached.
CENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Disadvantages of Centralized System –
• Highly dependent on the network connectivity –
System can fail if the nodes lose connectivity as there is
only one central node.
• No graceful degradation of system – abrupt failure of
the entire system
• Less possibility of data backup. If the server node fails
and there is no backup, you lose the data straight away
• Difficult server maintenance – There is only one server
node and due to availability reasons, it is inefficient and
unprofessional to take the server down for
maintenance. So, updates have to be done on-the-
fly(hot updates) which is difficult and the system could
break.
Applications of Centralized System
Application development – Very easy to setup a central server and
send client requests. Modern technology these days do come with
default test servers which can be launched with a couple
commands. For example, express server, django server.
Data analysis – Easy to do data analysis when all the data is in one
place and available for analysis
Personal computing
Applications of Centralized System
Use Cases
 Centralized databases – all the data in one server for use.
 Single player games like Need For Speed, GTA Vice City – entire
game in one system(commonly, a Personal Computer)
 Application development by deploying test servers leading to
easy debugging, easy deployment, easy simulation
 Personal Computers

Organizations Using –
National Informatics Center (India), IBM
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS
These are another type of systems which have been gaining a lot
of popularity, primarily because of the massive hype of Bitcoin.
Now many organizations are trying to find the application of such
systems.

In decentralized systems, every node makes its own decision. The

final behavior of the system is the aggregate of the decisions of
the individual nodes. Note that there is no single entity that
receives and responds to the request.
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Example –
Bitcoin. Lets take bitcoin for example because its the most popular
use case of decentralized systems. No single entity/organization
owns the bitcoin network. The network is a sum of all the nodes
who talk to each other for maintaining the amount of bitcoin every
account holder has.

Characteristics of Decentralized System –

Lack of a global clock: Every node is independent of each other

and hence, have different clocks that they run and follow.
Multiple central units (Computers/Nodes/Servers): More than
one central unit which can listen for connections from other nodes
Dependent failure of components: one central node failure causes
a part of system to fail; not the whole system
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Scaling –
Vertical scaling is possible. Each node can add resources(hardware,
software) to itself to increase the performance leading to increase
in performance of the entire system.

Components –
Components of Decentralized System are,
Node (Computer, Mobile, etc.)
Communication link (Cables, Wi-Fi, etc.)
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Architecture of Decentralized System –
• peer-to-peer architecture – all nodes are peers of each other. No
one node has supremacy over other nodes
• master-slave architecture – One node can become a master by
voting and help in coordinating of a part of the system but this
does not mean the node has supremacy over the other node
which it is coordinating
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Limitations of Decentralized System –
• May lead to problem of coordination at the enterprise level –
When every node is owner of its own behavior, its difficult to
achieve collective tasks
• Not suitable for small systems – Not beneficial to build and
operate small decentralized systems because of low benefit /cost
ratio
• No way to regulate a node on the system – no superior node
overseeing the behavior of subordinate nodes
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Advantages of Decentralized System –
• Minimal problem of performance bottlenecks occurring – The
entire load gets balanced on all the nodes; leading to minimal to
no bottleneck situations
• High availability – Some nodes(computers, mobiles, servers) are
always available/online for work, leading to high availability
• More autonomy and control over resources – As each node
controls its own behavior, it has better autonomy leading to
more control over resources
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Disadvantages of Decentralized System –
• Difficult to achieve global big tasks – No chain of command to
command others to perform certain tasks
• No regulatory oversight
• Difficult to know which node failed – Each node must be pinged
for availability checking and partitioning of work has to be done
to actually find out which node failed by checking the expected
output with what the node generated
• Difficult to know which node responded – When a request is
served by a decentralized system, the request is actually served
by one of the nodes in the system but it is actually difficult to
find out which node indeed served the request.
DECENTRALIZED SYSTEMS…
Applications of Decentralized System –
• Private networks – peer nodes joined with each other to make a
private network.
• Cryptocurrency – Nodes joined to become a part of a system in which
digital currency is exchanged without any trace and location of who
sent what to whom. However, in bitcoin we can see the public address
and amount of bitcoin transferred, but those public addresses are
mutable and hence difficult to trace.
Use Cases –
• Block chain
• Decentralized databases – Entire database split in parts and distributed
to different nodes for storage and use. For example, records with
names starting from ‘A’ to ‘K’ in one node, ‘L’ to ‘N’ in second node and
‘O’ to ‘Z’ in third node
• Cryptocurrency
Organisations Using –
Bitcoin, Tor network
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

A distributed system, also known

as distributed computing, is a
system with multiple components
located on different machines
that communicate and coordinate
actions in order to appear as a
single coherent system to the
end-user
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS…
Example –
Google search system. Each request is worked upon by hundreds
of computers which crawl the web and return the relevant results.
To the user, the Google appears to be one system, but it actually is
multiple computers working together to accomplish one single
task (return the results to the search query).

Characteristics of Distributed System – :

• Concurrency of components: Nodes apply consensus protocols
to agree on same values/transactions/commands/logs.
• Lack of a global clock: All nodes maintain their own clock.
• Independent failure of components: In a distributed system,
nodes fail independently without having a significant effect on
the entire system. If one node fails, the entire system sans the
failed node continue to work.
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS…
Scaling –
Horizontal and vertical scaling is possible.

Components of Distributed System –

Components of Distributed System are,
• Node (Computer, Mobile, etc.)
• Communication link (Cables, Wi-Fi, etc.)

Architecture of Distributed System –

• peer-to-peer – all nodes are peer of each other and work towards a
common goal
• client-server – some nodes are become server nodes for the role of
coordinator, arbiter, etc.
• n-tier architecture – different parts of an application are distributed in
different nodes of the systems and these nodes work together to
function as an application for the user/client
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS…
Limitations of Distributed System –
• Difficult to design and debug algorithms for the system. These
algorithms are difficult because of the absence of a common
clock; so no temporal ordering of commands/logs can take place.
Nodes can have different latencies which have to be kept in mind
while designing such algorithms. The complexity increases with
increase in number of nodes.
• No common clock causes difficulty in the temporal ordering of
events/transactions
• Difficult for a node to get the global view of the system and
hence take informed decisions based on the state of other nodes
in the system
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS…
Advantages of Distributed System –
• Low latency than centralized system – Distributed systems have
low latency because of high geographical spread, hence leading
to less time to get a response

Disadvantages of Distributed System –

• Difficult to achieve consensus
• Conventional way of logging events by absolute time they occur
is not possible here
DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS…
Applications of Distributed System –
• Cluster computing – a technique in which many computers are
coupled together to work so that they achieve global goals. The
computer cluster acts as if they were a single computer
• Grid computing – All the resources are pooled together for
sharing in this kind of computing turning the systems into a
powerful supercomputer; essentially.

Use Cases –
• SOA-based systems
• Multiplayer online games

Organizations Using –
Apple, Google, Facebook.
Client-Server Computing
• As with other developing stages in the computer sector, the
client comes with its new collection of server computing
terminology. As indicated in the term, a client-
server environment is occupied by the client and the server.
Client systems are typically single-user workstations or
computers that provide a highly user-friendly interface for the
end user.

• A client based station typically presents the type of graphical

interface (GUI) that is most comfortable for users that include
Windows and mouse requirements. Microsoft Windows and Mac
OS offer interfaces. The client based application is optimized for
ease of use and includes familiar tools such as spreadsheets.
Each server in a client/server environment allows a set of shared
servers currently used is database servers.
Client-Server Computing…
• Combines advantages of distributed and centralized computing
• The client server computing works with a system of request and
response. The client sends a request to the server and the server
responds with the desired information.
• The client and server should follow a common communication
protocol so they can easily interact with each other. All the
communication protocols are available at the application layer.
• A server can only accommodate a limited number of client
requests at a time. So it uses a system based to priority to
respond to the requests.
• Denial of Service attacks hinder a servers ability to respond to
authentic client requests by inundating it with false requests.
• An example of a client server computing system is a web server.
It returns the web pages to the clients that requested them.