Course Instructor: Valentin Cristea

Learning the models, methods, mechanisms, and instruments for the development of middleware. Learning actual problems in the domains of distributed systems and computer networks. Understanding and acquiring knowledge on the state of the art solutions for solving complex problems in distributed systems, related to: interprocess communication, data replication and consistency, fault tolerance, and security in large distributed systems (Internet, Grids). Study of heterogeneous systems based on objects, wireless networks and mobile agents. Distributed systems analysis for computing intensive and data intensive applications.

Syllabus:

• Introduction.
• Program categories (infrastructure, middleware, applications).
• The architecture of middleware services.Models.Properties. Design problems.
• Interprocess communication.
• Synchronous and asynchronous communication.
• Transient and persistent communication.
• Communication in the Web system (HTTP).
• Web service implementation (authentication, authorization, caching, state management, configuration).
• RPC. Model, implementation, semantics in the presence of faults.
• MPI. The model, point to point communication and collective operations. Data types. Process topologies. Modularity. Efficient implementation. MOM, flow oriented communication.
• Data consistency and replication in Internet. Model. Concurrent access to replica.
• Data centric consistency models. Client centric consistency models. Implementation. Replica placement.
• Consistency protocols. Fault tolerance. Basic concepts. Fault models. Failure masking using redundancy.
• Process resilience. Secure group communication. Reliable multicast. Distributed commit. Checkpointing. Message logging.
• Distributed systems security. Design problems. Building a secure system.
• Security mechanisms distribution. Trust and reputation. Communication security. Ipsec, Firewalls, DMZ, VPNs. Authentication. RADIUS, Secure RPC, Kerberos, SESAME. Confidentiality and integrity models: Bell-La Padulla, Biba, Harrison-Ruzzo-Ullman. Access control models (ACL, RBAC, TBAC, TMAC, SPACE, Context-Aware). Secure group management (Logical Key Hierarchy, One-way Function Tree, Iotus, Dual-Encryption Protocol, Group Diffie-Hellman). Capabilities. Delegation. Electronic commerce security. Java Security. Object based heterogeneous systems. CORBA. Architecture. IDL.
• Static and dynamic methods invocations. Interface repositories. Services. ORB. CORBA security.
• Wireless networks and mobile agents. Ad-hoc networks. Data transport in wireless networks. Finding mobile entities. Autonomous agents. Agent systems architecture. Communication. Mobility. Security. GRID Computing. GRID concept.
• Virtual Organizations. GRID architectures protocol oriented and service oriented. OGSA, WSRF and GT4 - Globus Toolkit 4.0. Grid security.
• Task scheduling - GRAM. Secure data transfer - RFT, GridFTP. Service Monitoring and discovery - MDS.