What are distributed applications?

Distributed applications are programs running on different machines connected together over a network. Using distributed applications, different or same functions of a single application can be performed at different locations. Distributed applications work on the principles of Distributed Systems. Here is an illustration to understand the working of distributed applications.

The above illustration shows an application running over three machines connected over a network. The application has two functions. The same two functions are shared on different devices.

Example

Web browsers primarily work as distributed applications. They have back-end software installed on the servers over the Internet or the World Wide Web, while the front-end software is installed on web applications like Google Chrome.

Advantages of distributed applications

• Distributed applications are very effective when it comes to efficiency. In a distributed environment, the applications can work independently. Hence, if one application fails or breaks down on a machine, it will not affect the performance of other applications over the network.
• The distributed environment allows adding more machines to the system without interrupting the system’s overall performance. This gives the advantage of scalability over the network.
• Distributed applications solve the issue of high latency. The response time of applications running on a distributed environment is swift, because the response of a query to the users is provided from a machine closer to them in the geographical location.

Disadvantages of distributed applications

• In distributed applications, data is stored at different locations, making it more difficult to ensure data security at each storage place.
• The network with which the machines are connected in a distributed system may experience network faults, due to which the whole system can experience communication barriers.