CIS 630: Distributed Systems

Meeting Time: Tuesday/Thursday, 2:00pm-3:20pm
Meeting Location: 11 Pacific
Instructor: Matthew Sottile (matt@cs.uoregon.edu)
Office Hours: 3:00pm-4:30pm, Monday/Wednesday, or by appointment.

Materials

Distributed Systems, Concepts and Design
Fourth Edition
Coulouris, Dollimore, Kindberg

Documents

Links will be populated as the course progresses.

Feedback

My goal with any class is that each and every student feels that they get something other than plain old credits out of it. You should leave the term with some sense that you learned something valuable. As such, I am very open to any and all feedback as the course progresses about the content, lecture style, and assignments in order to meet this goal. Please feel very free to contact me at any time with suggestions, criticisms, or requests so I can tune the presentation of the material to make sure you get the most out of the class.

News and announcements

Keep an eye here for updates and notices. The most recent postings will occur at the TOP of the list.

11/23/08: The schedule of presentations has been posted, along with some details on the length and content I expect from the presentations.
11/20/08: Exam topics posted.
11/6/08: Research paper 4 posted.
10/31/08: NOTE THE CHANGE IN DUE DATE FOR PROGRAMMING ASSIGNMENT #2! (Especially if you were late or didn't attend Thursday's lecture).
10/31/08: Lecture notes from Wednesday posted here.
10/24/08: A short note on semaphores.
10/23/08: Programming assignment 2 posted.
10/22/08: Research paper 2 posted.
10/17/08: In case you were curious about what is emitted by an IDL compiler for RMI systems, I generated a quick example using the LLNL Babel system. You can find that example here.
10/16/08: For those interested in the details related to GPS clock issues, the paper "Relativistic Effects on Clocks Aboard GPS Satellites" is an interesting, accessible read.
10/13/08: In response to a question I got in office hours, the project proposals are one per team, not one per person. All deliverables for the project are to be turned in as a team. In the final report, you should make it clear who contributed to what.
10/10/08: Slides posted.
10/9/08: Someone in class asked about JSON as an XDR. For those curious about what JSON is, the web page for info is http://www.json.org/. JSON is pretty interesting, so it's worth a look.
10/9/08: Programming assignment 1 posted! Enjoy.
10/3/08: I will be notifying you all with the team assignments for the project on Tuesday next week. You have until Monday to send any requests regarding team assignments beyond what you indicated already on the surveys.
10/2/08: Syllabus and week 1 slides posted.
10/2/08: I have populated the first 4 weeks of the schedule below. I may move some of the dates around for assignments between now and when they are assigned. The due date for an assignment will be clearly indicated when it is assigned, and will override any tentative dates you may have seen previously on the web page.

Readings

Research Papers

Leslie Lamport, "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System", Communications of the ACM, Volume 21, Number 7, July 1978. [PDF]
George Wells, "Coordination Languages: Back to the Future with Linda", 2nd International Workshop on Coordination and Adaptation Techniques for Software Entities (WCAT05), July 2005. [PDF]
Tim Harris, Simon Marlow, Simon Peyton Jones, and Maurice Herlihy. "Composable Memory Transactions", ACM Conference on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming 2005 (PPoPP'05).[PDF]
NOTE: You can skim sections of this paper about language details of Concurrent Haskell (such as sec. 5). The key parts to focus on are those directly related to transactions (secs 1,2,3,4,6). The point of this paper was to expose you to a timely topic in the concurrency world where transactions are playing a significant role - the PL details are less important for this class.
Sanjay Ghemawat, Howard Gobioff, and Shun-Tak Leung. "The Google File System", 19th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, Lake George, NY, October, 2003. [PDF]

Book Chapters

Note: Later chapters in week 7 and 8 subject to change.

Week 1: Ch. 1,2,3
Week 2: Ch. 4,5
Week 3: Ch. 11,12
Week 4: Ch. 13
Week 5: Ch. 14
Week 6: Ch. 15,8
Week 7: Ch. 9,19
Week 8: Ch. 10,18

Schedule and Slides

Please note that this is a tentative schedule. We will adapt it as the class progresses when necessary. I will indicate dates where things are assigned in green, and dates where things are due in red. The blank black "slides" entries will be populated with the actual slides once per week on Thursdays or Fridays. I will not post slides before that, as I will not know which slides we actually make it through in a given week until 3:30pm on Thursdays.

Week Tuesday Thursday

1 Intro, Models

Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)
Models, Networking

Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)

2 Networking, Socket concepts

Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)
Project teams assigned.
Socket concepts, RMI, RPC

Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)
Programming assignment 1 assigned

3 Time and global states

Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)
Homework exercises #1 assigned.
Coordination and agreement

Slides
Project proposal due
Research paper #1 assigned.

4 Coordination and agreement

Slides
Programming assignment 1 due.
Transactions and concurrency

Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)
Research paper #2 assigned.
Programming assignment 2 assigned.

5 Distributed transactions

Slides
Homework exercises #1 due.
Term paper proposal due
Distributed transactions

Slides
Research paper #3 assigned.

6 Distribution and replication

Slides
Distributed file systems

Slides
Programming assignment 2 due.
Research paper #4 assigned.

7 Name services

Slides
Homework exercises #2 assigned
Peer-to-peer systems

Slides
Term project progress report (Optional, but recommended)

8 No class due to conference. Distributed shared memory

Slides
Homework exercises #2 due.

9 Term exam! Vacation!

10 Paper presentations Paper presentations

11 Project presentations N/A

Week	Tuesday	Thursday
1	Intro, Models Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)	Models, Networking Slides (part1) / Slides (part2)
2	Networking, Socket concepts Slides (part1) / Slides (part2) Project teams assigned.	Socket concepts, RMI, RPC Slides (part1) / Slides (part2) Programming assignment 1 assigned
3	Time and global states Slides (part1) / Slides (part2) Homework exercises #1 assigned.	Coordination and agreement Slides Project proposal due Research paper #1 assigned.
4	Coordination and agreement Slides Programming assignment 1 due.	Transactions and concurrency Slides (part1) / Slides (part2) Research paper #2 assigned. Programming assignment 2 assigned.
5	Distributed transactions Slides Homework exercises #1 due. Term paper proposal due	Distributed transactions Slides Research paper #3 assigned.
6	Distribution and replication Slides	Distributed file systems Slides Programming assignment 2 due. Research paper #4 assigned.
7	Name services Slides Homework exercises #2 assigned	Peer-to-peer systems Slides Term project progress report (Optional, but recommended)
8	No class due to conference.	Distributed shared memory Slides Homework exercises #2 due.
9	Term exam!	Vacation!
10	Paper presentations	Paper presentations
11	Project presentations	N/A