CompSci 237 - Spring 2013: Distributed Systems Middleware

Prof. Nalini Venkatasubramanian

 

Announcements: Please check this page frequently for important announcements regarding course work - IMPORTANT!

Office Hours --Prof. Venkatasubramanian will be available in her office (Bren Hall 2086) on Tuesdays before class to discuss class projects etc.

  1. Please submit your paper summaries, survey papers, and project proposals via the course dropbox in https://eee.uci.edu/ (instead of sending emails)
  2. When Presentations are due. Please send your slides to the reader, Reza Rahimi (mrrahimi@uci.edu)
  3. Project Pre-Proposals are due end of Week 3 (April 19th).
  4. 1st summary set is due end of Week 3 :Guidelines for paper summaries
  5. Send the topic of your Presentation to: the reader, Reza Rahimi (mrrahimi@uci.edu)
  6. Survey Papers with Project Proposals are due in Week 6 :Guidelines for survey papers
  7. Would the students attending/enrolled in the class please send a contact email address to Reza Rahimi (mrrahimi@uci.edu )
  8. A list of high level areas for class projects has been posted. Talk to me if you are interested in any of these areas or any others.

9.       

Instructor Information

Nalini Venkatasubramanian (nalini@ics.uci.edu)
Office: Bren Hall 2086

 

Reader:  Reza Rahimi (mrrahimi@uci.edu)

 

Course Description:

CompSci 237 - Distributed Systems discusses concepts, techniques and issues in developing distributed systems middleware that provides high performance in large scale distributed and networked environments. The course will cover existing middleware standards and solutions such as DCE, CORBA, DCOM,.NET,EJB,J2EE, XML, Web Services, cloud computing platforms and discuss their purposes, relative advantages and shortcomings. Issues in designing  middleware environments for special purpose needs (fault-tolerance, QoS, security etc.) will also be discussed.

 

Motivation and Goals:

Advances in networking, communication, storage and computing technologies coupled with emerging novel application areas is enabling the widespread use of large scale distributed computing systems. These systems exhibit constant evolution as new applications place specialized requirements from the computing and communication infrastructure. Many applications provide QoS (Quality of Service) parameters that define the extent to which performance specifications such as responsiveness, reliability, resource utilization, security and cost-effectiveness may be violated. These requirements are often implemented via resource management mechanisms in the middleware. Distributed middleware enables the modular connection of software components to manage the resources of an open distributed system; it can be used to constrain the global behavior of the distributed system to ensure safety while providing cost-effective utilization of resources. This course will cover issues in developing distributed systems middleware that provides distributed application requirements while ensuring effective system utilization.

 

Prerequisites:

Undergraduate level course in operating systems and networks. A prior course of distributed systems is desirable. Working knowledge of Java is required.

 

 

Class Schedule:

Lecture:  Tuesdays/Thursdays 3:30 – 4:50  in ICS180

 

Grading Policy:

  • Homeworks (30%): 3 homeworks (weekly paper summaries), randomly selected each worth 10% each.
  • Class Presentation (10%)
  • Survey Paper (10%)
  • Class Project (50%): Includes project proposal, survey paper and final project demonstration and report.

 

  • Each paper summary should be 1-1.5 pages of text (suggested size 10-11 pt., single spaced, 1-inch margins)
  • Summaries should provide the following information about the paper in your own words:
    1. The main contributions of paper (the key problem(s), proposed techniques and approaches).
    2. Critique of approach, its advantages and its limitations.
    3. Implications to technology practice i.e. implementation feasibility in a distributed computing environment.

 

Projects and Time Schedule for Groups:

!See this link