Distributed data flow

Distributed data flow (also abbreviated as distributed flow) refers to a set of events in a distributed application or protocol. Distributed data flow (also abbreviated as distributed flow) refers to a set of events in a distributed application or protocol. Distributed data flows serve a purpose analogous to variables or method parameters in programming languages such as Java, in that they can represent state that is stored or communicated by a layer of software. Unlike variables or parameters, which represent a unit of state that resides in a single location, distributed flows are dynamic and distributed: they simultaneously appear in multiple locations within the network at the same time. As such, distributed flows are a more natural way of modeling the semantics and inner workings of certain classes of distributed systems. In particular, the distributed data flow abstraction has been used as a convenient way of expressing the high-level logical relationships between parts of distributed protocols.