Instructors:
- Section 1 - Ian Gorton, Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Seattle Campus
- Section 2 - Ian Gorton, Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University, Seattle Campus
This is an onground class taught on the Seattle Campus, 225 Terry Ave N
- Section 1 - Room 416, Tuesday 10-1.20pm
- Section 2 - Room 416, Wednesday 3.30pm-6.50pm
- Ian Gorton - i.gorton(at)northeastern.edu
Office Hours - Tuesday 1.30-3pm, 3rd Floor office
- Shiang Jin, Chin - chin.shi@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Every Friday starting 8th Sep 1:30-3:30pm (PST)
- Team Link here
- Zhining, Wang - wang.zhin@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Every Monday 8:30AM-10:30AM (PST) on Teams
- Aakash Mahalingam - mahalingam.aa@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Every Thursday starting 7th Sep 9:00-11:00 AM (PST)
- Meeting Link - https://northeastern.zoom.us/j/99561152289
- Shengguo, Zhou - zhou.she@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Sunday 8:30am-10:30am (PST) via Teams
- Mahvash Maghrabi - maghrabi.m@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Tuesday 4:00pm-6:00pm (PST) via Teams
- Xiaohan Qin - qin.xia@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Wednesday 9:00 - 11:00 am (PST) on Teams
- Gege Hou - hou.ge@northeastern.edu/
- Office Hours - Saturday 10:30am - 12:30pm (PST) via Teams
This course will cover the essential elements of distributed, concurrent systems and build upon that knowledge with engineering principles and practical experience with state-of-the-art technologies and methods for building scalable systems. Scalability is an essential quality of Internet-facing systems, and requires specialized skills and knowledge to build systems that scale at low cost.
This site contains all the informtion for the course, except the quiz questions and ppowerpoints taht you will find on Canvas. Class will meet each week for 3 hour 20 mins. Classes will be a mix of lectures and labs.
The book for the course, Foundations of Scalable Systems, is available for purchase at your favorite retailers, eg here. The course materials closely follow the book structure and content.
You can also access this and all O'Reilly books online through the Snell library.
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There are 4 individual assigments. They total 70% of the final grade.
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There are 4 quizes. They combine to add up to the remaining 30% of the grade.
- Quiz 1 covers weeks 1-4.
- Quiz 2 covers weeks 5-8.
- Quiz 3 covers weeks 9-12.
- The last quiz will have questions that cover the whole course.
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Each quiz will be allocated 45 minutes and be available at the start of the class in which it is scheduled.
| Week | Topic | Section 1 | Section 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Introduction to Scalable Distributed Systems | 9/12 | 9/13 |
| 2 | Concurrency | 9/19 | 9/20 |
| 3 | Distributed Systems Architecture Whirlwind Tour | 9/26 | 9/27 |
| 4 | Distributed Systems Fundamentals | 10/3 | 10/4 |
| 5 | Scalable Service Design | 10/10 | 10/11 |
| 6 | Asynchronous Systems | 10/17 | 10/18 |
| 7 | Serverless Processing Systems | 10/24 | 10/25 |
| 8 | Microservices | 10/31 | 11/1 |
| 9 | Data Replication, Partitioning and Eventual Consistency Introduction | 11/7 | 11/8 |
| 10 | Eventual Consistency | 11/14 | 11/15 |
| 11 | Strong Consistency | 11/21 | 11/22 |
| 12 | Stream Processing | 11/28 | 11/29 |
| 13 | Final Quiz | 12/5 | 12/6 |
| 14 | Assignment 4 presentations | 12/12 | 12/13 |
Submission instructions and exact deadlines are on the course Canvas site.
| Assignment | Topic | Due Date |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Concurrency and Client-server | 10/8 |
| 2 | Persisting Data | 11/5 |
| 3 | Microservices | 12/1 |
| 4 | Mix Request Loads | 12/15 |
Quizzes are held in class. Once you start you must finish within 45 minutes.
| Quiz | Section 1 | Section 2 |
| ---- | --------- --------- |
| 1 | 10/10 | 10/11 |
| 2 | 11/7 | 11/8 |
| 3 | 11/28 | 11/29 |
| 4 | 12/5 | 12/6 |
There is also an ever evolving FAQ in which we try to capture common problems and their solutions. You are more than welcome to contribute to this by creating a pull request.
In addition to the course book, the following are great resources, and can be excellent references for this course and your future career.
- Java Concurrency in Practice 1st Edition, Brian Goetz, Tim Peierls, Joshua Bloch, Joseph Bowbeer, David Holmes, Doug Lea
- Distributed systems : concepts and design, Coulouris, George F. ; Dollimore, Jean. ; Kindberg, Tim. ; Blair, Gordon. Harlow, England ; Addison-Wesley, 2012
- Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems, Martin Kleppmann, O'Reilly
Late Submission If you need more time, come beg :). Communications usually give a positive outcome. Without warning, you'll lose 5% of your final grade each day overdue.
Missed Quizzes Quizzes last approximately 45 minutes. If you are not able to attend and take the quiz at the same time as others, you must let your instructor know in advance. Failure to do this will result in a zero for the quiz you miss.
Do your own work You know the rules. Helping each other out is fine, but design and build and test your own system. Any unwarranted collaboration will result in a zero grade for the assignment.
Generative AI You can use any AI tools you like for all aspects of this course.
Code of Conduct and Course Values No disrespect, rudeness, or abuse will be tolerated, either in class or in online communication. During class, we will be doing a lot of sharing of ideas and open-ended work. It is important that everyone feel comfortable contributing to class discussion, and that their contributions are valued. To that end, our course values can be defined as:
- Respect
- Inclusion
- Support
- Kindness