Sistemi distribuiti 2016/2017

This course is meant to illustrate the conceptual foundations, the main features and the most relevant issues of today distributed computational systems. Also, the main technologies for constructing distributed systems are introduced, in terms of languages, middleware, and infrastructures.  In particular, object-based, web-based, coordination-based and agent-based systems are used as the sources for case studies and for experiments in the laboratory.

At the end of the course, students got acquainted with the fundamental issues of distributed systems, the computational models capturing their essence, and the technologies currently helping  facing them in the most systematic and effective way. In particular, students become familiar with the fittest solutions, technologies, architectures, and methodologies to design distributed systems, and is capable of

• devising out the most critical aspects of distributed systems coming from physical distribution
• determining the most proper methodological approaches
• selecting the fittest technologies for implementing the solutions detected

Generality on distributed systems

• Basic problems and definitions
• Software architectures

Examples

• The architecture of Web-based systems, REST & ROA
• Web Services
• The Cloud

Basics of distributed systems

• Communication
• Naming
• Synchronisation
• Consistency & replication
• Fault tolerance

Pardigms and technologies for distributed systems

• Distributed object-based systems: models and middleware
• From objects to agents: models, languages, and middleware
• Coordination of distributed systems: the role of interaction, models, and middlware

Experiments in the lab

• JADE: Java Agent DEvelopment Framework
• TuCSoN: Tuple Centres Spread over the Network

• Lessons with slides
• Examples discussed and built by the teacher and by experts from the field
• Lab activity

• Oral test
• Possible discussion of an individual/group project