Transparency in a Web or CDN

 Transparency

Transparency is defined as hiding user and programmer of the separation of the components of a distributed system applications, so the system is perceived as a whole, rather than a collection of independent components. Transparency exerts a great influence in the design of system software.

The RM-ODP reference manual [ISO 1996a] identifies eight forms of transparency. They provide a useful overview of the motivation and goals of distributed systems. The transparencies defined are:

Transparency of access: allows access to remote information objects in the same way as a local information objects.

Location transparency: allows access to information without knowledge of their location objects
Transparency of audience: allows multiple processes to operate concurrently using shared information objects and so there is no interference between them.
Replication transparency: allows you to use multiple instances of the objects of information to increase the reliability and performance without having users or application programs by that know the existence of replicas.

Failure transparency: allows users and application programs to complete its tasks despite the occurrence of faults in hardware or in software.

Transparency of migration: allows the movement of information within a system objects without affecting users or application programs.

Transparency of performance. It allows that the system is reconfigured to improve the performance while the various load.

Scaling transparency: allows the expansion of the system and applications without changing the structure of the system or the application algorithms.

The two most important are the transparencies of access and location; its presence or absence affects strongly the use of distributed resources. Often it is called them to both network transparency. Network transparency provides a similar degree of anonymity in resources which is located in centralized systems.