SWE 622 Distributed Software Engineering

SWE 622
Distributed Software Engineering

Fall Semester, 2009
Location: Innovation Hall 208
Time: Monday 4:30-7:10pm

Instructor Overview Textbook and Readings Grading Schedule Academic Integrity

Professor	Sam Malek	Electronic Mail: smalek@gmu.edu Office: 4431, Engineering Building Office Phone: +1-703-993-1677 Office Hours: Mon 3-4pm or by appointment
Teaching Assistant	Ehsan Kouroshfar	Electronic Mail: ekourosh@gmu.edu Office: 4456 Office Hours: Mon 2-3 & Tues 3-4

Overview

This course conveys key concepts for designing and building distributed software systems. The course is geared towards software engineers that work mostly at the application-level, but need to understand the features and limitations of existing middleware for distributed systems. Additionally, the course covers some research topics related to currently open problems. Specifically, some of the topic that will be covered are as follows: definition and scope of distribution, principles of communication and computation, software architectures of distributed systems, middleware systems, service discovery, quality of service, adaptive and self-* systems, mobility, security, and fault tolerance.

Textbook and Readings

Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms (2nd edition), Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Maarten Van Steen, 2007, ISBN 0-13-239227-5 (required)
Concurrency: State Models and Java Programs (2nd Edition), Jeff Magee and Jeff Kramer (recommended)
Supplemental papers (see the Schedule)

Grading

Class participation - 5%
Homework - 30%
Final exam - 30%
Project - 35%

Schedule (subject to change; check regularly)

Week	Date	Lecture topic	Readings	Announcements
1	8/31	Introduction	T1 J. Waldo, G. Wyant, A. Wollrath, and S. Kendall. "A Note on Distributed Computing." Sun Microsystems Technical Report TD-94-29, 1994.
2	9/7	Labor Day - No Class
3	9/14	No Class
4	9/21	Communication Fundamentals Middleware Solutions	T4.1-4.3 W. Emmerich. "Software Engineering and Middleware: A Roadmap." In The Future of Software Engineering, Anthony Finkelstein (Ed.), pp. 119-129, ACM Press 2000.	HW 1 (Soln)
5	9/28	Middleware Solutions Cont.	T4.3-4.5 A. Carzaniga, D.S. Rosenblum, and A.L. Wolf. "Design and Evaluation of a Wide-Area Event Notification Service." ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, 19(3):332-383, August 2001. RMI Tutorial Project Description	Teams
6	10/5	Naming Service Discovery Service-Oriented Computing	T5.1-5.3, T12 "An Introduction to Service-Oriented Architecture from a Java Developer Perspective." Debu Panda "Discovery and its Discontents: Discovery Protocols for Ubiquitous Computing." Robert E. McGrath, April, 2000. "Where is Middleware?" Steve Vinoski. IEEE Internet Computing, March 2002.
7	10/13	Services Cont.		HW 2 (Soln)
8	10/19	Architecture of Distributed Systems	T2.1-2.3 D. Perry, and A. Wolf. "Foundations for the Study of Software Architecture." ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, October 1992. R. T. Fielding. "Software Architectural Styles for Network-based Applications." UCI Technical Report, June 1999.
9	10/26	Mid Term Project Report (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7)
10	11/2	Coordination Synchronization	T3.1, T6.1-6.2 M2, M3	HW 3 (Soln)
11	11/9	No Lecture -- work on project
12	11/16	Consistency Replication Fault Tolerance	T7 T8.1-8.3, T8.5-8.6 M5	HW 4 (Soln)
13	11/23	Security	T9
14	11/30	Mobility Adaptation	T2.4, T3.5 A. Carzaniga, G. P. Picco, and G. Vigna. "Designing Distributed Applications with Mobile Code Paradigms." International Conference on Software Engineering, Boston, Massachusetts, May 1997.	HW 5 (Soln)
15	12/7	Project Presentation		Peer Evaluation
16	12/14	Final Exam

Note: T refers to chapters in Tanenbaum's textbook

M refers to chapters in Magee's textbook (recommended)

Academic Integrity

George Mason's policy concerning student conduct applies. Although students are encouraged to discuss the topics covered in class, all homework assignments, exams, and projects are to be completed individually, unless joint work is explicitly authorized by the instructor. If joint work is authorized, all contributing students must be listed on the submission. Any deviation from this is considered an Honor Code violation, and, as a minimum, will result in failure of the submission and, as a maximum, failure of the class.