CSCI 485 topics and supplementary material

CSCI 485: topics and supplementary material

Note that the pages linked are usually just my own preliminary/shorthand notes on particular topics - the classroom discussions will probably stray quite far from these!

Actual topics and ordering will be determined as the semester progresses, but an initial ordering includes:

Weeks 1-6

arm waving intro

General issues

General introduction to issues in massive online systems:
communication models (my shorthand notes)
message formats (my shorthand notes)
udp communication (my shorthand notes)
single vs multi thread (my shorthand notes)
state models (my shorthand notes)
data security and integrity (my shorthand notes)
data handling (my shorthand notes)
Sharding: data shards (my shorthand notes)
Sharding (wiki)
NoSQL:
BigTable, Cassandra, HBase ********
NoSQL movement (wiki)
Distributed computing
Distributed computing wiki
Distributed databases wiki
Collection of dist. comp. projects
lectures (ETH Zurich)

Exam 1 practice questions

Week 7: content distribution (e.g. Skype, VoIP, YouTube)
- skype (my shorthand notes)
- skype tech rep
- Reverse engineering skype (oKlabs)
- repository of articles
- Skype protocols (wikipedia)
  YouTube
- youtube (my shorthand notes)
- scalability/architecture
- overview
- wiki
- 7 years of scalability in 30 minutes
- supersizing youtube with python
Week 8: massive sales networks (e.g. Amazon, eBay)
- amazon (my shorthand notes)
- Technology
- Overview
- Amazon SimpleDB and wiki
- Amazon EC2 (cloud) and wiki
- Amazon S3 (mass storage) and wiki
  eBay
- eBay labs
- ebay tech blog
- tech weblog
- developers' site
- Grid computing approach
- wikipedia
- architecture
Week 9: search engines (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing)
- Google architecture (highscalability.com)
- Pics from google's data centre
- Pictoral overview (ppcblog)
- Alternative version ;-)
- How search works (video)
- Google cluster architecture (pdf)
- Google file system
- Bigtable database system (wiki)
  Lucene (open source base for Twitter's search)
- Lucene (wikipedia)
Week 10: social networking systems (e.g. FaceBook, MySpace)
- General overview: scalability and software
- Facebook dev: message technology, scalable memory allocation, social graph API, sw/tools used, sdk and general tech (apis for devs)
- highscalability: chat using erlang, social graphs, timeline discussion
- Hbase: write-ahead logs and storage ********
- Social graphs: philosophizing, privacy/experimentation, graph analysis
  MySpace
- overview
  Twitter
- architecture (infoq.com)
- Scaling (highscalability.com)
- twitter engineering and search engineering
- Scaling twitter (slideshow) and another, and another
- twitter API documentation
- open source api to twitter (by 140dev)
Week 11: cloud computing
- Overview
- wiki
- Apache CloudStack (open source cloud)
- open-source Eucalyptus (wiki)
- open-source OpenNebula (wiki)
  RackSpace
- Rackspace OpenStack
- open cloud reference architecture
- system architecture diagrams
- highscalability summary
Week 12: massively multiplayer games (e.g. Eve, W.o.W.) and virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life)
- Architecture
- Server model
- Scalability analysis
  Second Life
- Structural design (wiki) and server architecture and distributed database
- Highlights from dbasoul
- Architecture (highscalability)
- Architecture (presentation by Ian Wilkes)
- Client/server demand and optimizations
- overview
  Engines and opensource
- Pikko Server (erlang load balancer for mmo's)
- Ryzom (opensource MMPORGP) developer site
- Project Darkstar and RedDwarf Server
- Openskies communication engine (pdf)
  WoW (concrete info darn hard to come by!)
- Gamasutra article
- xslt
General info
- pushing behaviour into the data level
Week 13: Project presentations/review (lectures and labs)
Final exam period: Exam 2