Goals and Objectives

The overall goal of 490dp is for students to gain considerable experience in designing, implementing and evaluating distributed and pervasive applications. The particular objectives for students are:

• To build a working distributed or pervasive application.
• To gain experience in building complex systems.
• To work together in groups.
• To communicate their work clearly, be it in code documentation or write-ups.
• To consistently work towards a goal (and not just cram a few all-nighters at the last minute).

Lectures
The lectures are meant to jump-start the application building process. They have three objectives:

• To introduce system technologies that are not typically used for "desktop" applications.
• To familiarize students with technologies that make it easier to build distributed and pervasive applications.
• To give students an idea of the underlying concepts and point them in the right direction if they want to find out more.

Schedule

Readings are classified as follows:

• [Required] readings must be read before lecture. We will provide students with notes on the paper about a day before lecture. Though, we won't do this for the first required paper (Weiser's The computer for the 21st century).
• [Background] readings provide additional background or context. They include papers referenced in lecture.
• [Reference] readings provide a reference for the technology and are general useful for actually building applications.