COT4702

Formal methods in distributed computing systems

A Zaslavsky

6 points
* 4 hours per week
* First, second semester
* Caulfield

Objectives This subject will prepare students to address challenging research problems, adequately classify those, and apply appropriate tools and formal methods to describe and solve those problems. On completing the course students will be familiar with the currently available models, approaches and formal methods for distributed and mobile computing systems related research; have developed practical skills in the use of these models and approaches, so that they will be able to select and apply the appropriate tools and methods for a particular problem; also be aware of the current research directions in the field and their possible outcomes.

Synopsis The subject will deliver the fundamentals and theoretical foundations of mobile and distributed computing systems to honours and postgraduate students pursuing degrees in information technology and computer science. Specific topics include: formal methods and notation for describing concurrent and distributed systems, formal description techniques and languages, atomic commitment protocols, consistent global states and predicates, broadcast and multicast protocols, formalisms in fault-tolerance and reliability, scheduling problems, real-time and reactive systems, global and virtual time, causal and temporal dependencies, shared memory, modelling of distributed systems with Petri-nets, object algebra for object based distributed systems, distributed mutual exclusion, distributed resource management, agreement protocols, synchronisation, parallelism and concurrency models, graph and queuing theory applications in distributed computing systems. Individual lectures will also include analysis and discussion of recent research papers from distributed and mobile computing systems related journals and conferences.

Assessment Research papers and literature survey: 50%
* Oral presentations: 15%
* Practical work: 35%

Recommended texts

Imielinski T and Korth H (eds) Mobile computing Kluwer, 1996
Mullender S Distributed systems 2nd edn, Addison-Wesley, 1994
Tannenbaum Distributed operating systems Prentice-Hall, 1995
Zomaya A (ed.) Parallel and distributed computing handbook McGraw-Hill, 1996