Course Description

The EducationPage is the `official' web-page for this course and has schedule information. This page provides a longer description.

Contents

In this course we study a number of concrete systems that are used for distributed objects, like Java Remote Method Invocation, Corba of OMG, Microsoft's DCOM and SOAP. Additionally we may pay some attention to related techniques, like software components or techniques from distributed operating systems. The main emphasis is on practical applications, although we will focus on notions and ideas more than specific details.

What are the things you will learn in this course?

• Making IDL specifications for components
• Designing component oriented software
• Knowing what kind of problem appear with the distribution of objects and how to solve or avoid these.
• Understanding the differences between different ways of dealing with distributed objects, e.g. differences between Corba and COM.
• Designing a simple object oriented application in a team.
• Writing and debugging a simple distributed object oriented application.

The following subjects will be taught:

• Java RMI
• Corba
• COM, DCOM, ActiveX, OLE
• Components -- Javabeans
• SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and Webservices
• Optional: Opendoc and other open document structures
• Other distributed OO systems like Jini and Enterprise Javabeans.

Literature

There will be a list of articles (from the WWW) that you will have to study for this course.

Form

There will be lectures and a project that you do in groups of 2 or 3 persons. The lecture time is sometimes used for presentations by the project groups or discussions.

Assesment

Your final grade will be the average of the project grade and the exam grade. However, you must pass both parts (each at least 5.5 before rounding).

The project grade is mainly based on the implementation. However plus and minus points will be used as a correction based on the design, documentation, presentation, oral explanation and (individual) participation.