Engr 691-10: Special Topics in Engineering Science
Distributed Objects
Spring Semester 2001
Syllabus

Locations

The spring semester 2001 class meets in 352 Weir Hall from 4:00 p.m. to 5:15 on Monday and Wednesday.

The class is taught by Prof. Conrad Cunningham, whose office is in 312 Weir Hall. The official office hours for this class are 9:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays and by appointment at other times.

Prof. Cunningham's voice telephone number is (662) 915-5358 and fax number is (662) 915-5623. His WWW home page is http://www.cs.olemiss.edu/~hcc/ and his email address is cunningham@cs.olemiss.edu (send?).

The WWW home page for this class is http://www.cs.olemiss.edu/~hcc/distObj/ .

The final examination for this class is scheduled for 12:00 Noon on Wednesday, 9 May 2001.

Student Disabilities Services Statement

"It is the responsibility of any student with a disability who requests a reasonable accommodation to contact the Office of Disability Services (915-7128). Contact will then be made by that office through the student to the instructor of this class. The instructor will then be happy to work with the student so that a reasonable accommodation of any disability can be made."

Course Goal

The goal of this course is to increase the students' abilities to understand and develop distributed, component-based software systems for enterprise-level applications.

Course Description

This special topics course will focus on methods for the systematic development of enterprise-level, distributed computing applications and frameworks using Java 2 Enterprise Edition and related software packages. The course content will largely be driven by needs of the group programming projects selected.

Prerequisites

This class is intended for students admitted in full standing to the graduate program of the Department of Computer and Information Science. Students are expected to have a background in object-oriented programming, algorithms, data structures, and programming languages similar to the undergraduate courses CSCI 111, 112, 211, 433, and 450. Students are expected to have knowledge and skill in use of object-oriented design and programming techniques in Java. Knowledge of design patterns and framework design techniques is also a plus. Students who completed the ENGR 691, Special Topics in Software Architecture, during the fall semester of 2000 should be well qualified.

Graduate students in other fields should not be enrolled in this class without the explicit permission of the instructor and of their department. Any students in this category are expected to provide the instructor with a note from their advisor or department chair indicating such permission.

Source Materials

Textbooks:

No textbooks have been selected for now. One or more may be adopted as the semester progresses. We may be using draft copies of chapters of a new textbook for some of the material.

Readings:

Several journal and conference articles, research reports, and other materials as appropriate.

Software:

Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and related APIs. Enterprise JavaBeans application servers and development tools to be determined.

Course Topics

The actual topics and their order will be refined as the semester progresses.

• Introduction. Component-based software development. Enterprise computing applications. Java 2 Enterprise Edition software.
• Application framework design. Design patterns.
• Business component approach.
• User-interface layer concepts. JavaBeans. JavaServer Pages. Servlets. HTML. XML.
• Workspace and enterprise logic layer concepts. Remote Method Invocation (RMI). Enterprise JavaBeans. Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI).
• Resource layer concepts. Java Database Connectivity (JDBC).
• Message-based components. Java Message Service (JMS).
• Mobile computing. JINI, Javaspaces, or LIME.

Professional Conduct

As a student in Engr 691, you are expected to conduct yourself in a professional manner according to the Honor Code of the School of Engineering, the Information Technology Appropriate Use Policy, the M Book, and any other relevant policies.

Limited Collaboration Policy. Unless otherwise indicated, any homework assignment or programming exercise given in this class will be an individual assignment. The work you submit is to reflect the knowledge, understanding, and skill that you have attained as an individual. However, the instructor does want to encourage the development of a community of scholars who are actively engaged in discussion of the ideas related to this course. With this in mind, you are allowed to discuss solutions of the homework and programming problems with other students if done so according to the following guidelines:

• You may discuss ideas for homework and programming assignments with your classmates. However, you cannot collaborate on writing the solution or the program code. That is, you can talk about the problems and ideas for solving them, but you cannot write things down with anyone else. You are, of course, prohibited from copying or seeing another student's written solution, and you are not allowed to show your work to anyone else. Similarly, you are not allowed to copy text or program code from a book or a page on the Web unless explicitly authorized to do so by the instructor.

• You should accept help with care. If you work too closely with another student, you might mislead yourself into believing that you understand the concepts and techniques better than you actually do. Don't forget that the instructor has office hours and can probably give you hints or suggestions to get you started.

• You should give help with care. Do not help anyone too much. When you have solved a problem, it is tempting to just tell other students how you solved it. Instead, try to allow them to come to the solution on their own. Maybe give them a hint to help them get "over a hump." Remember that helping someone too much will hurt them in the long term if they can't work through problems on the exams by themselves. So avoid the temptation to do so. If you can't help other students without giving away the whole solution, direct them to see the instructor (who may or may not have a way to "edge" them toward the solution).

• You are not obligated to help anyone. If you feel uncomfortable helping another student for any reason, please direct them to see the instructor.

• Except as described above, all work in this class is covered by the School of Engineering's Honor Code statement on plagiarism. It is plagiarism "to knowingly deceive, copy, paraphrase, or otherwise misrepresent your work in a manner inconsistent with professional conduct".