This tutorial is written while learning for a university test in distributed systems. The aim of this article is to remember the most important facts and steps to understand distributed programming in the Java language. This tutorial is useful for programmers which are able to use Java, but want to learn more about concurrency.   As oracle provides everything you need to learn that in detail, including examples, this is just a collection of other tutorials you should learn step by step. This collection is adapted from the course of the distributed systems group of the technical university of vienna.

1. Learning the Basics of Network communication

• Networking Basics: Short explanation of networking basics like TCP, UDP and ports.
• Java IO Tutorial: It’s absolutely necessary to be familiar with I/O and streams to do sockets operations!
• Java TCP Sockets Tutorial: A very useful introduction to (TCP) sockets programming.
• Java Datagrams Tutorial: Provides all the information you need to send and receive datagram packets using UDP.
• Java Concurrency Tutorial: A tutorial about concurrency that covers threads, thread-pools and synchronization.
• Java Programmierhandbuch und Referenz – Section 13.2.3: German tutorial for using datagram sockets. (optional)

Important Java-API Classes:

• IO: IO Package API
• Concurrency: Thread API, Runnable API, ExecutorService API, Executors API
• Java TCP Sockets: ServerSocket API, Socket API
• Java Datagrams: DatagramSocket API, DatagramPacket API

2. Learning RMI

• Java RMI Tutorial: A short introduction into RMI.
• JGuru RMI Tutorial: A more detailed tutorial about RMI.
• JavaInsel RMI Tutorial: German introduction into RMI programming. (optional)

Important Java-API Classes:

• RMI: Remote API, UnicastRemoteObject API, Registry API, LocateRegistry API
• Properties: Properties API
• IO: IO Package API

3. Security

• Chapter 9 – Security from the book Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms (2nd edition)
• Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA) Reference Guide: Tutorial about the Java Cryptography Architecture (JCA)
• Handbook of Applied Cryptography (free version) (optional)

Important Java-API Classes:

• Java SE 6: Cipher, SecureRandom, and Signature classes
• Bouncy Castle: PEMReader and Base64