Høst 2024

INF-3200 Distributed Systems Fundamentals - 10 stp

The course is administrated by

Institutt for informatikk

Type of course

The course can be taken as a singular master's-level course.

Course overlap

D-340 Distributed computations theory and practice 8 ects

Course contents

Fundamental mechanisms and structuring principles for distributed systems are covered. Focus is in issues like, for instance, consistency, naming, interaction, fault-tolerance, security, resource control, distributed file systems, and distributed document-based systems (WWW).

Admission requirements

Higher Education Entrance Requirement + Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or similar education. The Bachelor degree must contain a specialization in Computer Science worth the equivalent of not less than 80 ECTS credits. Application code: 9371 - Singular courses at master's level.

Objective of the course

Knowledge:

Knowledge of the main topics of distributed systems at an introductory level.
Knowledge of the central challenges of distributed systems, their behavior, characteristics, advantages and disadvantages.
Knowledge of the primary ideas, architectures, designs, and implementations of distributed systems
Knowledge of some select cases of distributed systems
The best way to learn how to build distributed systems is by practice, and so an important part of the course is a substantial distributed system design and implementation project.

Skills:

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
Skills to analyze real distributed systems, and identify central characteristics including performance scaling.
Skills in presenting a system, giving a demonstration of it, and identify lessons learned.

General competence:

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.

Language of instruction

The language of instruction is English and all of the syllabus material is in English. Examination questions will be given in English, but may be answered either in English or a Scandinavian language.

Teaching methods

Lectures: 30 hours, Colloquium: 30 hours, Laboratory: 30 hours. The course is given every autumn semester.