Distributed Systems 2025/2026

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.

• Case Studies
  The CAP Theorem. Availability, Consistency, Failure in Distributed Systems  •  The Problem of Consensus in Distributed Systems  •  Distributed Ledger Technology. Blockchain as Middleware  •  Representational State Transfer (ReST)  •  Logical Clocks  •  Simple Agents in JADE  •  Coordination in Linda  •  Code Mobility
• General Issues of Distributed Systems
  Why Distributed Systems?  •  Replication & Consistency in Distributed Systems  •  Dependability in Distributed Systems  •  Roots of Distributed Systems. Computation in Space & Time  •  Definitions & Goals for Distributed Systems  •  Sorts of Distributed Systems  •  Modelling Distributed Systems. Software & System Architectures  •  Modelling Distributed Systems. Process Algebra  •  Computing with Time  •  Agents for Distributed Systems  •  Coordination of Distributed Systems  •  Computing with Space
• Technologies for Distributed Systems
  Build Automation  •  Containers  •  Asynchronous Programming  •  Sockets  •  Presentation  •  Web Services  •  Consensus  •  Queues

• Lessons with slides
• Examples discussed and built by the teachers
• Lab activity

• Verification of lab activity
• Presentation and discussion of an individual/group project