Distributed Systems - Interactive curriculae of TU Ilmenau

BSc Computer Science, especially - algorithms and complexity, - automata and formal languages, - operating systems, - networks, - discrete structures

Fachkompetenz: Die Studierenden erwerben fortgeschrittene Kenntnisse über Design und Implementierung verteilter Systeme, wobei die Schwerpunkte auf verteilten Algorithmen und Systemsicherheit liegen. Sie werden hierdurch in die Lage versetzt, verteilte Systeme für komplexe Anwendungsszenarien zu konzipieren und entwickeln. Methodenkompetenz: Die Studierenden verfügen über das Wissen, Entwurfs- und Analysemethoden anzuwenden, mit denen grundlegende nichtfunktionale Systemeigenschaften erreicht und nachgewiesen werden. Systemkompetenz: Die Studierenden verstehen verteilte Systeme als strukturierte Systeme aus Komponenten mit individuellen Aufgaben und hochgradig komplexen Beziehungen und verstehen das Zusammenwirken dieser Komponenten und der Paradigmen, Methoden, Algorithmen und Architekturprinzipien, die dieses Zusammenwirken organisieren.

This course focuses on 2 major aspects of distributed systems: distributed algorithms and systems security.

Part 1: Distributed Algorithms

The design and implementation of distributed algorithms is not an easy task. Many facets of uncertainty caused by asynchrony, process and communication failures make it difficult to devise distributed software systems that are correct and robust.
This course focuses on fundamentals that one has to understand and master in order to design distributed algorithms. The first part of the course discusses fundamental possibilities and limitations of distributed algorithms and introduces synchronous and asynchronous models for algorithm specification and analysis. The second part then focuses on basic algorithms for distributed event ordering, synchronization, and consensus that are correct and robust in the presence of partial failures.

Course topics are

• synchronous and asynchronous models for distributed algorithms
• time, clocks and the ordering of events
• distributed synchronization
• distributed consensus and leader election

Part 2: Systems Security

The second part focuses on methodological engineering of security properties of distributed systems based on security policies and their formal models. In an early stage of the engineering process formal security models are used for the precise and unambiguous representation of security policies which then are analyzed by static model checking and simulative model execution. Successful models afterwards are transformed via specification languages into executable code which finally is integrated into a system's trusted computing base.

Course topics are

• requirements analysis
• security policies and formal security models
• model engineering
• security mechanisms
• security architectures

Handouts, Papers, Books

see website of course

oral exam (20 min)

oral exam (20 min)