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895 Home Page
CS 895 is a 3-credit doctoral seminar that studies a very hot area in Computer Science called autonomic computing. These systems have the property of being self-managing, self-optimizing, self-configuring, self-tuning, self-healing, and self-protecting. For this reason, autonomic systems are also known as self-* systems. The main motivations for autonomic systems include the ever increasing complexity of modern computer systems (e.g., e-commerce systems, systems based on Web Services, Service-Oriented Architectures, Grid Computing, Cloud Computing) and the highly unpredictable demands on these systems. These factors make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for human beings to constantly reconfigure the systems to adapt to varying load and occurrence of failures or security attacks. Therefore, systems have to be able to adapt themselves as the human body adapts itself to various sorts of external conditions.
This course addresses many types of autonomic systems as well as various techniques to design and build such systems. This is a doctoral seminar based on reading and analysis of current papers. Master students are allowed to take the course based on instructor permission.
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Grades are based on class participation, presentation of papers in class, and on two term papers.
Grades will be numerical on the scale 0-100. Your final numerical grade,
G, is computed as:
G = 0.15* Class Participation + 0.20 * Paper Presentations in Class + 0.25 * Term Paper 1 + 0.4 * Term Paper 2
The following table is used to convert your numerical grade G to a letter grade:
| G | letter grade |
|---|---|
| [97,100] | A+ |
| [93,97) | A |
| [88,93) | A- |
| [85,88) | B+ |
| [81,85) | B |
| [77,81) | B- |
| [65, 77) | C |
| < 65 | F |
There is no curving. No extra credit assignments will be given after the semester is over to increase grades. The instructor may decide to give an extra-credit assignment during the semester. Everyone will be given the opportunity to do the extra-credit assignment.
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SYLLABUS: Week 1 will be devoted to an introduction to the topic and to course logistics. Each week thereafter will be devoted to the the analysis and discussion of papers. Papers will be assigned in advance and one or two students will be selected to be the primary presenters of the paper to the class. Discussion will follow. Students have to come prepared to discuss the papers in class. Each student will be required to bring a one-page summary/critique of the papers read each week. This will count toward class participation.
Papers will be selected from various sources including:
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For each term paper, students will select a coherent set of a minimum of 4 to 5 papers, the core papers, on which they will base the term paper. The term paper has to cover at least the following topics: a) general area of the issue addressed within autonomic computing; b) summary of the contributions presented in the core papers. This summary must be written in your own words in a way that clearly lays out the assumptions and limitations of each contribution; c) critique of the papers; and d) open problems and future work that could be derived from the work presented in the core papers. Grading will be based on content, organization, and readibility. It is expected that the second term paper has some novel material that, if worked up some more, could lead to the submission of a conference paper.
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| First Day of Classes | August 30, 2010. |
| Labor Day: no class | September 6, 2010 |
| Columbus Recess (no classes); class held on 10/12 | October 11, 2010. |
| Term Paper 1 Due: | October 12 (Tuesday), 2010 |
| Last day of classes: | December 6, 2010. | Term Paper 2 Due: | December 6, 2010. |
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No collaboration is allowed among students in any of the individual assignments.
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Last updated: August 30, 2010.