Course Title: Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems
Part A: Course Overview
Course Title: Advanced Topics in Distributed Systems
Credit Points: 12.00
Terms
Course Code |
Campus |
Career |
School |
Learning Mode |
Teaching Period(s) |
ISYS2402 |
City Campus |
Postgraduate |
140H Computer Science & Information Technology |
Face-to-Face |
Sem 1 2008, Sem 1 2009, Sem 2 2009, Sem 1 2010, Sem 2 2010, Sem 2 2011, Sem 2 2012 |
ISYS2403 |
City Campus |
Undergraduate |
140H Computer Science & Information Technology |
Face-to-Face |
Sem 1 2008, Sem 1 2009, Sem 2 2009, Sem 1 2010, Sem 2 2010, Sem 2 2011, Sem 2 2012 |
Course Coordinator: Prof. Zahir Tari
Course Coordinator Phone: +61 3 9925 3782
Course Coordinator Email: zahir.tari@rmit.edu.au
Course Coordinator Location: 14.11.18
Pre-requisite Courses and Assumed Knowledge and Capabilities
You may not enrol in this course unless it is explicitly listed in your enrolment program summary, and you have confirmed with your program coordinator that it is an appropriate choice for your study plan.
You are required to have successfully completed : Foundations of Distributed Computing or Distributed Systems, and Data Communication and Net-Centric Computing
Disclaimer: This seminar-mode course will run only if there are sufficient enrolments by the beginning of the relevant semester. If it is cancelled, you will be advised to choose a suitable alternative course.
Course Description
This course is about advanced topics in Distributed Computing. It provides you with in-depth technical / scientific understanding of some of the key topics, such as “distributed monitoring” and “performance (with caching). This course complements existing courses of the Distributed Cluster by providing a much deeper technical understanding of the concepts, algorithms and architectures used to solve such issues/topics.
The topics addressed in this course represent some of the key strengths of the DSN (Distributed Systems and Networking) discipline at RMIT CS&IT. See http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/dsn for more details.
Objectives/Learning Outcomes/Capability Development
You will learn:
- How to investigate core research issues in Distributed Systems
- How to compare and evaluate technical solutions proposed for the various topics covered in this course;
- How to summarize and criticize solutions proposed by researchers
Overview of Learning Activities
This course runs in a seminar mode where research papers are discussed and analyzed during the lectures. The papers to be looked at will cover two major topics: distributed monitoring, and caching. Each topic covers 6 weeks of the semester, where in the first week of each topic, the lecturer provides an overview of the area related to the topic, and the remaining two weeks will be allocated to students to present a research paper. There will therefore be 2 presentations (of ½hr each, including 10min for questions/discussion). The aim of these students’ presentations is to allow you to explain what you understood as well as present it.
You are expected to attend all the lectures, including the presentations of your colleagues. It is also expected that you will be “pro-active”, i.e. discuss research ideas, comment on your colleagues’ approaches, and be part of the research discussion related to the topics covered during the lectures.
There are two (Teacher Guided) contact hours per week, which are dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the main concepts and the implementation of a project. Student directed hours will be dedicated to the students’ analysis, implementation and reporting work.
Overview of Learning Resources
You will be able to access course information and learning materials through the Learning Hub (also known as online@RMIT) and will be provided with copies of additional materials in class or via email. Lists of relevant reference texts, resources in the library and freely accessible Internet sites will be provided.
Overview of Assessment
The assessment for this course consists of
- 2 presentations, each relating to one of the topics covered in the course.
- 2 written reports of reading material. The reading materials (for a given topic) will be given by the lecturer in the first week when the topic has been started. You will then have five/six weeks to read at least 4-5 papers in the area and provide a summary of the reading (maximum 5-6 pages). A template for the reports will be made available at the web site of the course.
For standard assessment details, including deadlines, weightings, and hurdle requirements relating to Computer Science and IT courses see: http://www.rmit.edu.au/compsci/cgi