This course focuses on practical issues in designing and implementing modern computer systems, with some emphasis on distributed software. In the spring of 2003, the course has been completely updated, with a new textbook, revised syllabus and far more content drawn from recent industry platforms such as Microsoft's .NET and the C# language used to build applications in it, Sun's J2EE environment for "industry-strength" Java applications, and Web Services.� Other topics covered will include network architecture as seen from the perspective of a distributed application, object-oriented software development methodologies and tools, peer-to-peer computing systems, other styles of distributed computing, fault-tolerant systems, data centers and clusters, autonomic and grid computing, network operating systems and tools for accessing databases.�

Students in COM S 514 undertake a substantial software project. This year, the suggested project in involves using .NET (from Visual Studio C#) to build a Web Services application with a peer-to-peer data replication mechanism and client "roll-over" in the event that a server fails or becomes inaccessible.� While the Web Services aspect of this project can be developed using built-in features of Visual Studio C#, you'll need to code the protocols to support replication and roll-over.�� However, students can also propose and develop alternative projects if they have a suitable idea.� COM S 514 students are encouraged to work either on their own, or in a small team of up to three members on these projects.� (If you have never used C#, no need to worry: the language is essentially identical to Java, although the runtime libraries are different; we'll provide the software for free so that you can use lab machines or your own PC).

The basic project is suitable for a one-person effort.� Obviously, a team effort should be more ambitious than a solitary one. For example, a team project could tackle challenges of dealing with corporate firewalls and network address translation, mobility issues or even security challenges.

Historically, many students in COM S 514 have expanded the project a little, obtained additional project credit by coregistering in COM S 790 (the "MEng Project" Course number).� If you do this for 3 credits, you can use your COM S 514 project to satisfy the MEng degree "software project" requirement.� You need our permission for this, and to get it, you'll need to convince us that what you have in mind is ambitious enough to represent a suitable MEng project.� We expect you to do some work for those extra three credits, so your project will be bigger and more time consuming than if you didn't opt to use the COM S 514 project for this purpose.� Something important to know is that no incompletes are granted in COM S 514 during the spring semester.� You must complete your project by the "project demo day!"

Here are instructions as to how to configure your client to use the P2P testbed.   Here is a diagram of the P2P testbed.  Many thanks to Doug Chan and Ian Fung for setting this up.

Homework: there will be a weekly assignment, typically either based on problems from the textbook or asking for a very short (one-page) essay on a topic arising from the week's readings and lectures.� Two of these homework assignments will be a bit tougher and will count as take-home prelims.� In addition, as mentioned above, there will be a software project.� Grading will be a total of 10% for homework other than the prelims, 20% each for the two prelims and 50% based on the software project.

�