COT3002

Distributed computing systems

P Granville and A Zaslavsky

6 points
* 2 hours per week
* Second semester
* Caulfield

Objectives At the completion of this subject students should have an understanding of distributed systems architecture; understand the design of distributed applications, operating systems and file systems; and appreciate the need for the use of distributed computing technology in the design and construction of advanced computing applications.

Synopsis This subject aims to provide students with a knowledge of the architecture of distributed systems; networking and internetworking; interprocess communications and RPC; distributed operating systems; mobile computing systems; distributed database systems; distributed file systems; proprietary approaches to distributed computing, eg Project Andrew, Athena, HP, Eastman Kodak's; object technology in distributed systems; failure recovery and fault tolerance issues; concurrency control in distributed systems; synchronisation and replication in distributed systems; security in distributed systems.

Assessment Examination (2 hours): 50%
* Two practical assignments: 50%

Prescribed texts

Coulouris G and Dollimore J Distributed systems: Concepts and design 2nd edn, Addison-Wesley, 1994

Recommended texts

Mullender S Distributed systems ACM, 1989
Singal M and Shivaratri N Advanced concepts in operating systems McGraw-Hill, 1994