Entry requirements

120 credits including 60 credits in computer science/technology, including a basic course in computer networks.

Learning outcomes

A student should, after successful completion of the course, be able to:

• plan and carry out a development project with participants from different cultures and with different technical competences.
• theorise about the trade-offs associated with central concepts and algorithms for distributed systems.
• take a critical approach to solving open problems and making design decisions during the development process.
• constructively deal with issues that arise in heterogeneous collaborative projects, such as personality conflicts and cultural differences.
• plan a project in such a way that it can be done within given restrictions and using relevant collaboration tools.

Content

The course is focussed on practical project work in a development project where internationally composed groups of 5 to 8 members design and implement a distributed control system. The course includes planning and carrying through a project, collaboration and group dynamic aspects of international team work. Concepts in distributed systems such as remote objects, clocks and clock synchronisation, global states, replication, atomic transactions and concurrency control, threads and methods for locking as well as accessing shared resources, network programming, programming of embedded systems (e.g. Lego NXT) are included.

Instruction

Lectures, lessons and project work.

Assessment

Oral and written exams as well as active and constructive participation in the project.