582420 Middleware (3 ov)
This is year 2003 course description - new version is slightly different and will be updated very soon.Position in Curriculum and Goal
Elective course for laudatur. The goal is to acquire basic understanding of modern middleware functionality and development trends.
Themes
Middleware provides services on top of operating system services and data communication services. The middleware services provide applications for instance with location servcies, activation and communication. Modern middleware systems are related to component based software engineering. The course discusses goals of middleware services and uses realisation examples from CORBA environments.
Course Prerequisites
Preferrably Distributed systems, Operating systems II, Data Communication II. Also Software architectures has been accepted as a preparing course. Cum laude must be completed.
Methods for Achieving Credit
The lecture course involves- lectures (in Finnish)
- course exam
- essey of 10-15 pages (topics agreed with the lecturer beforehand)
- seminar day where individual esseys are presented.
Course contents
- Introduction
- What is middleware?
- Development history and motivation
- Positioning middleware in software engineering and runtime environments
- Different types of middleware
- Transaction middleware
- Message oriented middleware
- Procedural middleware
- Object and component middleware
- Object and component oriented middleware
- Case: CORBA
- Some basic services
- Some research themes
- (Trading)
- Reflective middleware
- Mobility
- Final seminar (in Finnish)
Course material
The exam is based on a set of articles, grouped by the above course outline: Exam material. "Lecture slides (partially in Finnish)" are available but do not form a readable material. The slides only intend to give an outline of the topics discussed. Additional material may help to understand the required texts and to provide starting points with the individual essays.Lea.Kutvonen@cs.Helsinki.FI