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I have been studying Process Synchronization and inter-process communication in Operating Systems Engineering and have come across multiple problems like "Sleeping Barbers", "Producer Consumers", "Dining Philosophers" and "Reader Writers" . While working on these problems I found them very interesting and I get a sort of feeling that each problem has its special significance. I can visualize the situations in which "producer consumers problem" and "reader writers problem" can be applied but have been stuck with "Sleeping Barbers Problem" and "Dining Philosophers problem".

What are the examples of application of Sleeping Barbers problem and Dining Philosophers problem in computer science( primarily Operating Systems Design and Databases)?

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  • $\begingroup$ I understand I should be a bit more specific. What I really wanted to understand is that how do we make use of each of these problems in the real world? for example, I know that the Reader-Writer problem can be used to explain the Read and Write locks in databases where concurrent reads are allowed and similarly the producer-consumer problem can be used to explain a situation where multiple processes are generating or modifying data in the shared buffer and other processes are consuming data from it. $\endgroup$ – theraven Feb 10 '17 at 5:56
  • $\begingroup$ What I don't understand is when do we require Sleeping barbers problem or dining philosophers problem? I can think of no situation for these that is why I was asking for the specific scenario in which each of these problems can be applied so that I can compare them and get a firmer understanding of this concept. $\endgroup$ – theraven Feb 10 '17 at 5:56
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for explaining your thoughts. Now, can you edit your question based on this? Part of our mission here is to build up an archive of high-quality question and answers that might be useful to someone else in the future. Rather than putting clarifications in the comments, we'd like you to edit the question to improve the question. Maybe pick one of those (either sleeping barbers or dining philosophers), and edit your question to ask about why we need that problem and what the motivation for studying it is. You can feel free to ask a second question about the other one. $\endgroup$ – D.W.♦ Feb 10 '17 at 5:59
  • $\begingroup$ I have edited the question and I think it's precise and answerable now. $\endgroup$ – theraven Feb 10 '17 at 6:14

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