You are here: Teaching, Distributed Systems

This module will be delivered over the first semester to students at stage 4 of the part-time BSc Information Systems / Information Technology. Students on the module learned to define and understand the nature of distributed systems, as well as looking at the means of coordinating events in systems which exist without stared state or time, and which communicate through message passing over typically partially reliable media.

Class Times

A three hour lecture takes place in room A311 on Wednesday evenings, from 18:30 to 21:30.

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Assignment

Please see the assignment specification.

The assignment is due on Wednesday, 2nd December 2009.

It contributes 30% to the overall mark for the module.

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Examination

The examination takes place in January 2010. It is 2 hours long, with students required to attempt 3 out of 4 questions.

It contributes 70% to the overall mark for the module.

View past examination papers.

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Noticeboard

Notice number	Date	Message
5	4th November 2009	The presentation about the assignment from today's class is now available in the assignment specification page.
4	22nd September 2009	There will be two Distributed Systems classes in the weeks beginning 28th September (replacing Computing Infrastructures) and 19th October (replacing Software Engineering 3). The Wednesday evening class used by Distributed Systems will be taken by Computing Infrastructures in the week beginning 5th October and Software Engineering 3 in the week beginning 12th October.
3	1st September 2009	Some students from last year's class are willing to sell their copy of the book. Please contact me for their details if you'd like to make them an offer.
2	1st September 2009	The suggested textbook for this module is: Distributed Systems, Concepts and Design (4th Edition), by George Coulouris, Jean Dollimore and Tim Kindberg.
1	1st September 2009	Classes begin on Wednesday, 23rd September 2009.

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Notes and Labwork

Lecture Number	Date	Topic
1	23rd September 2009	Characterisation of Distributed Systems
2	30th September 2009	Concurrent Programming in Java
3	1st October 2009	Build your own Web Server
4	20th October 2009	Interprocess Communication and Distributed Objects
5	21st October 2009	Distributed Objects and Java RMI
6	28th October 2009	Multi-Agent Systems
7	4th November 2009	Multi-Agent Communication and Interaction
8	11th November 2009	Multi-Process Coordination and Elections
9	16th November 2009	Lab Week (Monday Evening)
10	25th November 2009	Transactions and Distributed Transactions
11	2nd December 2009	Security in Distributed Systems
12	9th December 2009	Web Services and Service-Oriented Architectures
13	16th December 2009	Review and Preparation for Examination