1) Background

The last few years have seen a significant number of advances in computer and communications technologies, as well as the sharp decline in their cost. These developments, coupled with the growing availability (almost ubiquity) of network and internet connections, have resulted in the huge growth in the size and diversity of computer programs, which are executed across multiple computers. The most prominent example use the World Wide Web (WWW), which has been called “the last gold rush of the millennium,” but other examples abound.

This course will examine the state of the art and practice in distributed systems and will provide significant experience in programming them.

2) Course Objectives

As a result of this course, students will:

· Be well-versed in the fundamental issues involved in designing, programming, and using distributed systems

· Be familiar with some of the most significant new software technologies for creating distributed programs

· Have significant experience using CORBA, the most technologically advanced software framework for creating distribute program, as well as exposure to XML and Microsoft’s SOAP.

3) Text

a) Required Text:

Coulouris, G, Dollimore, J., and Kindberg, T. Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design, 3ed, Addison-Wesley, 2001, ISBN 0-201-61918-0.

b) Optional Texts:

Birman, K. Building Secure and Reliable Network Applications, Manning and Prentice Hall, 1997, ISBN 0-137-19584-2. (May be out of print; author has some .pdf online under www.cs.cornell.edu.)

Orfali, Robert et al. Client/Server Survival Guide, 3ed, Wiley, 1999, ISBN 0-471-31615-6.

Natarjan, V. et al. Programming With Visibroker : A Developer's Guide to Visibroker for Java, 2ed, John Wiley & Sons; Sept. 2000 (not quite available), ISBN: 0-471-37682-5.

Scribner, K. and Stiver, M. Understanding SOAP, Sams, 2000, ISBN 0-672-31922-5.

Orfali, R., Harkey, D., and Edwards, J. Client/Server Survival Guide, 3ed. John Wiley and Sons, 1999, ISBN 0-471-31615-6.

4) Additional Reading

Additional papers will be either handed out or linked to in the web page.

5) Course Prerequisites

Cpt. S. 360 (Systems Programming), or permission from the instructor. Also fluency and significant experience in either Java or C++.

If you do not meet these prerequisites, you MUST come and talk with me the first week of class. I reserve the right to drop you from the course if it becomes obvious that you do not meet the prerequisites.

6) Course Requirements

You are required to attend every lecture. If you miss one, it is your responsibility to find out what happened and to collect any material, which was handed out in class.

You are also expected to participate in class discussions to a reasonable extent. This aids your learning and that of your classmates, and provides valuable feedback on the lecture.

I reserve the right to lower the grade of any student who is markedly deficient in attendance and/or participation.

7) Assigned Work and Tentative Grading Policy

There will be two mid-term exams and one final examination; the second mid-term exam will only cover the material discussed and assigned after the first exam. There will be five homework assignments given out, mainly involving exercises from the book. There will be five programming projects. The first two will be individual programming projects to familiarize you with CORBA, and especially VisiBroker, the CORBA software we will be using in this course. The third programming assignment will be with Microsoft’s SOAP and XML. The fourth and fifth ones will be decided later in the semester, based on student progress and the available software, but will very likely involve at least CORBA. All programming assignments will be done with the computers in the instructional lab in ETRL 301.

The following allocation of grade percentages is tentative, and may change during the semester:

Exams (2): 40%

Homeworks (5) and Surprise Quizzes : 20%

Projects (5): 40%

8) Policies and Expectations

Your exams, homeworks, and programming projects are subject to the academic honor code. DO NOT CHEAT IN ANY WAY: DO YOUR OWN WORK! Side effects of cheating may involve expulsion, revocation of assistantships, a pox on your family, etc., not to mention seriously “ticking me off”…

It is quite acceptable to ask others things like “Have you gotten this exception before?,” and even have them look at your stack trace and its code It is quite unacceptable, on the other hand, to have them spend hours helping develop or seriously rearrange your program’s logic. If in doubt, ask me first….

9) Tentative Schedule (Updated 9/20/00)

#	Day	Topic	Text	HW	Project
1	8/28	Characterization of DSs[2]	1+papers
2	8/30	Characterization of DSs	1
	9/4	NO CLASS: LABOR DAY HOLIDAY
3	9/6	Networking (guest lecture)	3 (some)
4	9/11	System Models	2	1 out
5	9/13	System Models	2
6	9/18	CORBA-I	Papers, 17[3]	1 due	1 out
7	9/20	CORBA-II	Papers
8	9/25	Interprocess Communication	4
9	9/27	Interprocess Communication	4	2 out	1 due 2 out
10	10/2	Distributed Objects & Remote Invocations	5 (some)
11	10/4	CORBA-III	Papers	2 due
12	10/9	Operating System Support	6		2 due
13	10/11	Operating System Support	6	3 out	3 out
14	10/16	Security	7
15	10/18	Security	7	3 due
16	10/23	MIDTERM EXAM			3 due
17	10/25	XML and SOAP (TA lecture)	Papers		4 out
18	10/30	Distributed Simulation & HLA (BBN guest lecture)
19	11/1	Midterm Exam review; Naming	9
20	11/6	Naming	9	4 out	4 due
21	11/8	CORBA-IV	Papers		5 out
22	11/13	Distributed Replication (guest lecture)	Papers	4 due
23	11/15	Distributed Realtime Systems (guest lecture)	Papers
	11/20	NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
	11/22	NO CLASS: THANKSGIVING HOLIDAY
24	11/27	Time and Global States	10
25	11/29	Time and Global States	10
26	12/4	Coordination and Agreement	11
27	12/6	Coordination and Agreement	11	5 out	5 due
28	12/11	Distributed Quality of Service	Papers
29	12/13	Distributed Quality of Service	Papers	5 due
	12/19	FINAL EXAM (Time and Room TBA)

· Student Survey (complete, tear off, and return to instructor)

a) Which courses (or their equivalents at other schools) have you taken?

WSU #	What	Taken before	Taking Now	Not taken ever
CS 460	Operating Systems	13	2	8
CS 455	Intro Networks	18	0	5
CS 555	Comp. Comm. Net	6	10	7
CS 557	Advanced Networks	1	0	22
CS 360	Systems Programming	12	0	11
EE 414	Digital Systems Design	8	0	15
CS 425	Network Security	2	0	21
CS 427/527	Computer Security	4	0	19
CS 451/551	Database Systems	12	3	8
CS 461	Embedded Systems	3	0	20

b) What is your Major and what category of student are you:

	CptS	Cpt Eng	EE	ME	Other
Undergraduate	3	0	1	1	0
Graduate	14	1	4	2	0

If other, please write what your major is here:

c) What experience do you have with these different languages and environments?

What	0	1	2	3	4	5
C++	0	7	11	4	1	0
Java	7	6	7	3	0	0
LISP	20	2	1	0	0	0
Ada	22	1	0	0	0	0
CORBA	20	3	0	0	0	0
DCOM/COM+	20	2	1	0	0	0
Microsoft OLE	20	2	1	0	0	0
Microsoft Programming environments (Visual C++/J++, etc)	4	13	7	3	2	0
Linux	0	13	7	3	0	0
Windows NT or Windows 2000	1	6	10	3	3	0
Other (specify) (Cluster, C, ASP):		1	1	1

0 == none or vague familiaty; 1 == played with it a little; 2 == used in lots of courses, and am one of the best at it among my peers; 4 == used for years and a local guru; 5 top 100 or 1000 in the US in it.

[1] Note: This class is being taught as CptS 483 Section 2 and CptS 580 Section 1. Once these new courses are approved by the WSU administration then we will hopefully automatically switch your official registration to these new classes.

[2] Note: I abbreviate “Distributed System” as DS.

[3] Chapter 17 may be useful additional material on CORBA for some students, but only the topics that are lectured on or programmed in projects will be testable.