CS 655
System and Network Architectures and Implementation
(Fall 2012)

M. Tamer Özsu
tamer.ozsu@uwaterloo.ca
DC 3350

Lecture times: Thursdays 4:30-7:20PM

Lecture location: DC 3313

Calendar Description

Distributed, multi-user applications are designed and implemented using many underlying technologies that must be coordinated to provide important features such as robustness, scalability, manageability, ubiquitous access, privacy, security, authentication, and role-based access control, to name only a few. The network supporting the application may be crucial to its successful implementation. The application logic itself is likely implemented in a number of languages and programming environments. Students will be provided with an advanced overview of current networking and distributed systems topics, and will apply it to case studies drawn form consumer internet applications, enterprise systems, and medical and healthcare systems.

Prerequisites

Students are expected to understand the fundamentals of programming languages, data structures, operating systems, and algorithms, each at least at the level of an introductory course.

References

There are no required textbooks for the course. There will be lecture slides that will be provided and we will be reading a number of papers. However, the lecture notes will be based on the following textbooks and you are expected to read the relevant chapters:

• Computer Networking, 5th edition, James F. Kurose and Keith W. Ross, Addison-Wesley, 2009.
• Distributed Systems, 2nd edition, Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen, Prentice-Hall, 2007.

For access to papers, you can consult Michael Ley's online bibliography:

• DBLP Computer Science Bibliography

Workload and Evaluation (tentative and may change)

• Three critical reviews of research papers (30%)
  • First one due by 12 October (email me PDF file)
  • The second and third one are due by 30 November (again email me PDF files)
• Final exam (40%)
  • This will be scheduled separate from the usual finals week at a mutually agreeable time. I may even give a take-home final, but I have not decided yet.
• Class presentations (20%)
  • Each student will present one or two papers in class and critique it (30 minutes). The number of presentations will depend on the number of students.
• Class participation (10%)
  • I will lecture the first two or so classes; after that half of each class will be lecture, the second half will be discussion. See below...

Please review the materials concerning academic integrity and academic honesty. You must complete and sign the Academic Integrity Acknowledgement Form, and hand it in at the beginning of third lecture.

Schedule (tentative and may change)

The first two classes will be straight lectures. Starting September 27, the first half of the class will be lecture on the indicated topic, and the second half will be devoted to a class discussion of papers related to the topic of the previous week's lecture.

Eventually, there will be clickable links from Lecture Notes that will allow you to download lecture slides; similarly links from Papers will take you to a list of appropriate papers for that topic that will be discussed in class and that can also be used for critiques.