Distributes Systems — Module 2

A.Y. 2024/2025


Prof. Giovanni Ciatto, Tutor: Matteo Magnini


Compiled on: 2025-06-30 — printable version

Table of Contents

  1. General aspects

    1. About the course (this page)
    2. Preliminaries
    3. Communication mechanisms
    4. Presentation
    5. [No time for this in A.Y. 24-25] Testing

  2. PONG case study

    1. Game Loop
    2. Game Model
    3. I/O
    4. Architecture
    5. Protocols
    6. Analysis

Teachers

Prof. Giovanni Ciatto

Tutor Matteo Magnini

Prioritize the General forum

  • All technical question
  • Any other non-personal question

When using the email

  • Include all teachers in CC, always, there including prof. Omicini
  • Clarify the academic year and the name of the course in the subject

Organization of Module 2

  • Lectures in lab with immediate hands-on
  • Exercises and examples in Python
    • submission of exercises via GitHub may grant you extra points
  • Final project work in any language of your choice

Time—table

Changes will be published on the News forum

Workflow for the project work (pt. 1)

Detailed rules here: https://apice.unibo.it/xwiki/bin/view/Course/Ds2425/Projects/Rules

  1. Propose your project idea on the Projects forum

    • 1-3 students per group
    • open a discussion thread named [Surname1, Surname2, ...] Project Proposal: <your project name>

  2. Any subsequent communication on the project should be done on the same thread

    • use the thread as a backlog of any official communication concerning the administration of your project work
    • if you want to talk privately about your project work, mention the URL of your project’s thread in your email

  3. Wait for the teachers to approve your proposal

    • most likely, we’ll try to estimate the effort and ask for changes if too much or too little
    • we’ll also check for overlaps with other groups

  4. Create a GitHub repository where to develop your project and post the URL onto your project’s thread

    • make all the members of the group collaborators on the repository
    • give full admin rights to the teachers:

Workflow for the project work (pt. 2)

Detailed rules here: https://apice.unibo.it/xwiki/bin/view/Course/Ds2425/Projects/Rules

  1. Work on your project:

    • commit and push your changes often
      • only the master or main branch will be considered for the evaluation
    • in parallel, or later, write a report about your report following this template

  2. Once done, post a message on your project’s thread to signal the end of the work

    • we’ll clone your repository and evaluate the code

  3. Edits may be requested by the teachers, to either the code or the report (or both)

  4. Once the teachers are satisfied, you’ll be requested to present your work to prof. Omicini

    • after setting up a meeting with him, in private
    • 12-15 minutes presentation + 5-10 minutes Q&A

Goals

  • Teach you how to design and develop Distributed Systems, in practice…
  • … via a running example (namely, distributed Pong)
  • Give you a reference for developing your final project work

Topics

  • Distributed architectures and protocols
  • Communication mechanisms (TCP / UDP sockets)
  • Presentation (serialization and deseralization)
  • Issues of distributed systems programming
  • [Hopefully] Testing distributed systems
  • [Hopefully] Overview on distributed programming frameworks / libraries

Prerequisites

  • Basic knowledge of Python (see Python Programming 101 if missing)
  • Basic knowledge of Git (see these slides if missing)
  • Basic knowledge of Linux shell (see these slides if missing)
  • Basic understanding of computer networks, ISO/OSI model, TCP/IP stack

Software Requirements

Required

  • A working internet connection
  • A working Python 3.10+ installation
  • PyCharm OR Visual Studio Code
  • A decent Unix terminal
    • prefer Git Bash on Windows

Lecture is Over


Compiled on: 2025-06-30 — printable version

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