Sistemi distribuiti L-A 2007/2008

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.

• Knowledge
  • Foundations of distributed computational systems
  • Server-side Technologies: HTTP, CGI, PHP. Java server-side: servlet, JSP, JSTL. ASP.NET
  • Middleware and Infrastructure: from CORBA to JADE, .NET, Service Oriented Architectures, Web Services
• Operating abilities
  • Analysis, design, development and deployment of web-based distributed systems

• Introduction to the course
• Introduction to distributed computational systems
• Elements of Internet & Web systems
• XML
  • introduction
  • foundations: XML documents, elements and tags, XML tree, correctness and well-formedness, attibutes, entities, ...
  • DTD
  • namespaces
  • internationalisation: character set & encoding, multilingual documents
  • XML & CSS
  • DOM & SAX
• XML applications
  • XHTML
  • XML Schema
  • XSL & XSLT
  • other applicazions: examples and perspectives 
• Server-side technologies
  • HTTP
  • CGI
  • PHP
• Java server-side
  • servlet
  • JSP
  • JSTL
  • Java Server-side Interaction Model
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
  • the general framework 
  • Web Services (WS)
  • WS Implementation: AXIS2 architecture and use 
• .NET
  • the framework
  • ASP .NET
• Middleware, infrastructures, and distributed system engineering
  • the evolution: from distributed objects to multiagent systems 
  • CORBA
  • JADE
• AJAX: technologies and pattern

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

• Multiple-choice test on theoretical issues
• Discussion of an individual/group project