INF-8203 Advanced Distributed Systems - 10 stp

PhD students or holders of a Norwegian master´s degree of five years or 3+ 2 years (or equivalent) may be admitted. PhD students must upload a document from their university stating that there are registered PhD students. This group of applicants does not have to prove English proficiency and are exempt from semester fee. Holders of a Master´s degree must upload a Master´s Diploma with Diploma Supplement / English PhD students at UiT The Arctic University of Norway register for the course through StudentWeb . External applicants apply for admission through SøknadsWeb.

Application code 9303.

All external applicants have to attach a confirmation of their status as a PhD student from their home institution. Students who hold a Master of Science degree, but are not yet enrolled as a PhD-student have to attach a copy of their master's degree diploma. These students are also required to pay the semester fee.

Knowledge:

• Knowledge of the classic and contemporary state of the art literature on distributed systems.
• Knowledge of design and implementation principles in modern distributed systems.
• The best way to understand the systems described in the literature is by practice, and so an important part of the course is a substantial distributed system design and implementation project. 

Skills:

• Skills in participating in a technical discussion of advanced scientific papers
• Skills in systems-level programming. How to build a working prototype of a non-trivial distributed system including its architecture, design, and implementation.
• Skills in the languages, frameworks, and tools used to build a prototype distributed system
• Designing and performing performance measurements on distributed code
• Analyze the behavior of the developed prototype(s)
• Skills in presenting a system, giving a demonstration of it, and identify lessons learned.
• Identify research problems and challenges in distributed systems
• List the state-of-art tools and techniques for addressing research problems and challenges in distributed systems

General competence:

• Competence to read scientific literature, and carefully extract information from it and present it coherently in public.
• Competence in selecting a suitable set of programming languages, frameworks, and tools for a given problem domain.
• Competence in asking relevant questions about computer based systems
• Conduct technical reviews, technical writing, and technical presentations

Oral exam counting 100%. Approved assignments give access to the final oral exam.

Course requirements: The coursework includes up to 3 written programming assignments graded "Approved" / "Not approved". Oral presentation of the assignments and demonstrations of a working system can in special cases be claimed by the course responsible. Participation in the seminars is mandatory. Students must expect to prepare for, and give oral presentations of chosen articles in the seminars.

Grading scale: Letter grades A-E, F - Fail.

Re-sit examination:  It will not be given a re-sit exam for this course, unless a postponed exam already is arranged (conditional re-sit exam). To get access to the re-sit exam the student must have passed the course requirements. 

Postponed examination:  The exam will be arranged as soon as practicably possible after the reasons for absence have ceased, and normally no later than two months after a new semester has commenced. It will be arranged an oral exam counting 100%. To get access to the postponed exam the student must have passed the course requirements.  

For further details see: Utfyllende bestemmelser for eksamener ved Fakultet for naturvitenskap og teknologi (only in Norwegian)  |  Regulations for examinations at the UiT