Data Distribution Management

Data distribution management (DDM) deals with two basic problems: how to distribute data generated at the application layer among underlying nodes in the distributed system and how to retrieve data whenever it is necessary. DDM is addressed in two different network environments: peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks and cluster-based network environments. Although DDM provides the same data indexing service in both distributed network environments, it serves upper-layer applications for very different purposes, and it is supported by underlying networks with distinctive infrastructures. This chapter introduces some basic concepts that are widely used in the high-level architecture (HLA)/DDM based distributed simulations community. In order to understand these concepts more thoroughly, their different representations as used by two major DDM systems: the region-based system and the grid-based system are incorporated.