SYSC 5800: Network Computing (Winter 2007)

Latebreaking News

None, the course is over .....

In the Winter 2007 term, Thomas Kunz was teaching a graduate course on Network Computing (course description can be found here). As more information becomes available, it will be posted on this page. To find out more about the format of documents made available on this course webpage, read the comments on this page.

As usual in a graduate course, no single textbook covers all the topics we will touch on. I will make the slides I will use in class available on this page. The course will also require a substantial amount of work/contribution from each student. However, some somewhat good books to cover parts of the course are listed below:

Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms, by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and Maarten van Steen, Prentice Hall 2002, ISBN 0-13-088893-1.
Practical Handbook of Internet Computing, Munindar P. Singh (editor), Chapman and Hall/CRC Press 2004, ISBN 1-584-88381-2.
Java Network Programming, 2nd edition, by Merlin Hughes et al., Manning Publications 1999, ISBN 1-884777-49-X.
XML in a Nutshell, 3rd edition, by Elliotte Rusty Harold, O'Reilly 2004, ISBN 0-596-00764-7.
Jabber Developer's Handbook, by William Wright and Dana Moo, Sams Publishing 2004, ISBN 0-672-32536-5.
Building Web Services with Java, 2^nd edition, by Steve Graham et al., Sams Publishing 2005, ISBN 0-672-32641-8.
An Introduction to XML and Web Technologies, by Andres Møller and Michael Schwartzbach, Addison-Wesley 2006, ISBN 0-321-26966-7.

Reading papers, preparing presentations: the course will require you to (among other things) read papers, prepare presentations, and engage in a course project, training your research skills. To prepare for these tasks, you should consult a number of online references on how to go about this (preparing a GOOD presentation or project report takes substantial effort):

Here is a short sequence of PPT transparencies from Nitin Vaidya on how to read, write, and present papers... (postscript or HTML document).
IEEE Computer, September 2005, had an interesting article on Presentation Skills.
Another useful reference is the website Advice on Research and Writing.
Some interesing comments are also available in the Graduate Study in the Computer and Mathematical Sciences: A Survival Manual website.
On the other hand, avoid the pitfalls identified in How to Have a Bad Career in Research/Academia.
Professor Bertossi posted some projects and paper presentation guidlines for his graduate course.
A (tongue-in-cheek) dictionary of "useful" research phrases.
A lengthy but very interesting talk by Richard Hamming on what it takes to be a great researcher.
An interesting editorial on what higher education should be about.
In many communication protocol description (in particular for security protocols), the communicating partners are called Alice and Bob. Wikipedia has an entry for a whole slate of characters traditionally used. In cryptography, Alice and Bob have been psycho-analyzed as well.
Jabber and Homeland Security/Emergency Response

Plagiarism is unfortunately a not too infrequent problem in academia. I expect all submissions to clearly identify what sources/references have been used for what part of your submission. If you are unsure as to what constitutes plagiarism, please check this website.

Course handout, marks, exams:

Official Course Handout as PDF file or as HTML document
Sample Course Project documents: Installation and User Guide, Report
Group Assignment and Jabber tutorial presentation topics, tutorial presentations: Jabber Overview, Jabber Clients, Jabber Gateways, Jabber Servers
Sample Final Exam, as PDF file or as HTML document
Sample Solution to Sample Final Exam, as PDF file or as HTML document
2006 Final Exam, as PDF file or as HTML document
Sample Solution to 2006 Final Exam, as PDF file or as HTML document
2007 Final Exam, as PDF file or as HTML document
Sample Solution to 2007 Final Exam, as PDF file or as HTML document

Course material (password-protected):

Course notes (PDF version has 2 slides per page, depending on the printer/viewer/computer, not all pages may be rendered but the vast majority will, the HTML version looks slightly better with Internet Explorer than with Netscape). Also some supplementary material for various sections.

Thomas Kunz