Goal of the Course

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.

History

• the courses of Distributed Systems over the years
• the student's projects of Distributed Systems over the years

Teaching Materials

• books
  • book of the course
    • Distributed Systems. Principles and Paradigms (book, 2007) — Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Marteen van Steen
    • Sistemi Distribuiti (book, 2007) — Andrew S. Tanenbaum, Marteen van Steen
  • other useful books
    • RESTful Web Services (book, 2007) — Leonard Richardson, Sam Ruby
• slides
  • main content
    • Introduction to the Course
    • Introduction to Distributed Systems
    • Software Architectures
    • Processes in Distributed Systems
    • Communication in Distributed Systems
    • Naming in Distributed Systems
    • Synchronisation in Distributed Systems
    • Tuple-based Coordination
  • Web technologies
    • The Architecture of the World Wide Web
    • XML Concepts
    • XML Applications
    • Introduction to Ajax
    • Server-side technologies
  • seminars
    • From Distributed Objects to Multi-Agent Systems: Evolution of Middleware (Giovanni Rimassa)
    • Swarm Intelligence: Concepts & Applications (Franco Zambonelli, CAS Site)
• code & examples
  • Ajax Examples
• papers
  • Introduction to Distributed Systems
    • Scale in Distributed Systems (book chapter, 1994) — B. Clifford Neuman
    • The Anatomy of the Grid: Enabling Scalable Virtual Organizations (article in journal, 2001) — Ian Foster, Carl Kesselman, Steven Tuecke
    • System Support for Pervasive Applications (article in journal, 2004) — Robert Grimm, Janet Davis, Eric Lemar, Adam Macbeth, Steven Swanson, Thomas Anderson, Brian Bershad, Gaetano Borriello, Steven Gribble, David Wetherall
  • The Architecture of the World Wide Web
    • Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures (phd thesis, 2000) — Roy Thomas Fielding
    • Principled Design of the Modern Web Architecture (article in journal, 2002) — Roy Thomas Fielding, Richard N. Taylor
  • Software Architectures
    • Composing Adaptive Software (article in journal, 2004) — Philip K. McKinley, Seyed Masoud Sadjadi, Eric P. Kasten, Betty H.C. Cheng
    • The Vision of Autonomic Computing (article in journal, 2003) — Jeffrey O. Kephart, David M. Chess
    • Self-star Properties in Complex Information Systems: Conceptual and Practical Foundations (edited volume, 2005) — Ozalp Babaoglu, Márk Jelasity, Alberto Montresor, Christof Fetzer, Stefano Leonardi, Aad van Moorsel, Maarten van Steen (eds.)
  • Synchronisation
    • Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System (article in journal, 1978) — Leslie Lamport
    • Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP/1.1. Internet RFC 2616
    • Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI): Generic syntax. Internet RFC 2396