4005-730-01 Distributed Systems Team Research Investigation Prof. Alan Kaminsky -- Spring Quarter 2013 Rochester Institute of Technology -- Department of Computer Science Team Formation Pick a Topic Team Reports Team Report 1 Team Report 2 Team Report 3 Team Report 4 Team Deliverables Grading Absences Late Submissions Plagiarism Team Formation Half of the graded work throughout the course will be done in two- or three-person teams. You get to pick your own partners. You must do the following by 11:59pm on Tuesday 12-Mar-2013: Pick your partners. I would strongly prefer three persons on each team. I will accept two persons on a team if necessary; for example, if N ≢ 0 (mod 3), where N is the number of students in the class. Pick a name for your team. Set up a web site for your team. You may use the web site in your CS account (public_html directory) or any publicly accessible web server. Initially, the web site home page should just list the team name and the team members. Send me an email giving the team name, the names of the team members, the email addresses of the team members, and the URL of the team web site. Team formation is worth 5% of your final course grade. If you complete the above steps by the deadline, you will get 5%. Otherwise, you will get 0%; furthermore, I will assign you arbitrarily chosen partners. Pick a Topic Pick a research topic to investigate. The topic must: Be related to distributed systems in some way. Be stated as a verifiable hypothesis, including the measurements that will prove or disprove the hypothesis. Involve building one or more software applications or simulations with which to gather data to prove or disprove the hypothesis. To find a topic that interests you, I suggest scanning the textbook Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms; scanning other books or journals in the library; scanning other books or journals listed in the Bibliography; or scanning the databases linked off the Wallace Library's GCCIS web page. I also suggest looking at the topics chosen by students in prior quarters. Here are some examples of suitable research hypotheses: Distributed hash table (DHT) protocol X yields query times proportional to the logarithm of the number of nodes, as measured by the absolute query time in seconds. DHT protocol X yields smaller query times than DHT protocol Y, as measured by the average number of nodes to which a query is forwarded. DHT protocol X distributes the load more evenly than DHT protocol Y, as measured by the variance in the number of keys stored on each node. Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing application X is more tolerant of node failures than P2P file sharing application Y, as measured by the file transfer failure rate as a function of the node failure rate. You must do a literature search and identify a minimum of three research papers in the chosen topic area. The papers must be dated 2003 or later (i.e., within the past ten years). The papers must be published in refereed archival research journals or conference proceedings -- that is, in publications aimed at researchers. You will analyze these three research papers and present your analyses in class. For help with your literature search, use the resources on the Wallace Library's GCCIS web page, or contact the College's specialist reference librarian, Roman Koshykar. You will present your topic to the class during your first team report (see Team Report 1). Based on your presentation, I may require you to change the scope or direction of your investigation. Team Reports Each team will record its progress on the team web site and will report its progress regularly in class. Starting 21-Mar-2013, Thursday class sessions are set aside for team reports. Each team will give four progress reports during the course, one report every other week. Specific dates and times for each team's progress reports will be assigned later. For each report, the team must give a prepared presentation (using PowerPoint, LibreOffice, or the like) and must respond to questions from the audience. All team members must participate in the presentation. The team must also post the prepared slides on the home page of the team web site, before giving the report in class, in the form of a PDF file, along with any other supporting materials. The items to be covered in each report are listed below. You will project your presentation using the classroom's PC projector. You may use your own laptop or tablet. If you don't have a laptop, borrow one. Team Report 1 For the first team report, cover the following items. You will have 10 minutes for the presentation. Introduce the team members. Give an overview of the topic area you plan to investigate. State the hypothesis you are investigating. Describe the approach you plan to take to prove or disprove your hypothesis, including the measurements you will do. Note: It is not acceptable to do one or two tests to reach your conclusion. Your hypothesis might be true in certain situations and false in other situations. You must take measurements over a broad range of operating conditions. Describe the software you plan to deliver, and describe how this software will generate the measurement data. Give citations for the three research papers you plan to analyze along with a brief description of what each paper is about. Each research paper citation must include the following information: author(s), title of paper, name of journal or conference, date, page numbers, URL (if available online). Your slides must be posted on the home page of your team web site before the class session in which you give your report, in the form of a PDF file. You may post other versions of your slides as well (e.g. PowerPoint or LibreOffice). Team Report 2 For the second team report, cover the following items. You will have 20 minutes for the presentation. Summarize your topic area to remind the audience what you are doing. Give an analysis of your first research paper. Describe the problem or problems the research paper is addressing. Describe the novel contributions the research paper makes toward solving those problems. Describe how you plan to use the research paper's results in your own team's investigation. Give an analysis of your second research paper, likewise. Give an analysis of your third research paper, likewise. Describe the progress you have made in your investigation since the previous report. Describe any software designs and/or test results you have developed so far. If you have any software running, do a demonstration. Your slides must be posted on the home page of your team web site before the class session in which you give your report, in the form of a PDF file. You may post other versions of your slides as well (e.g. PowerPoint or LibreOffice). Don't remove your previous slides from the web site. Team Report 3 For the third team report, cover the following items. You will have 20 minutes for the presentation. Summarize your topic area to remind the audience what you are doing. Describe the progress you have made in your investigation since the previous report. Describe any software designs and/or test results you have developed so far. Do a demonstration of your software. The software may be preliminary -- for example, not all the capabilities may be implemented yet -- but you must have some working software to demonstrate. Your slides must be posted on the home page of your team web site before the class session in which you give your report, in the form of a PDF file. You may post other versions of your slides as well (e.g. PowerPoint or LibreOffice). Don't remove your previous slides from the web site. Team Report 4 For the fourth and final team report, cover the following items. You will have 20 minutes for the presentation. Summarize your topic area to remind the audience what you are doing. Restate the hypothesis you investigated. Describe the design of the software you developed. Do a demonstration of your software. Give the measurement data you collected. Analyze your data to show how the data proves or disproves your hypothesis. Discuss future work that could be done to further your investigation. Discuss what you learned from your investigation. Your slides must be posted on the home page of your team web site before the class session in which you give your report, in the form of a PDF file. You may post other versions of your slides as well (e.g. PowerPoint or LibreOffice). Don't remove your previous slides from the web site. Team Deliverables You must post the following items on the home page of your team web site. These team deliverables will be graded and must be posted by 11:59pm on Thursday 02-May-2013: A final report, in the form of a PDF file, including: An overview of your topic area A statement of your hypothesis A description of the approach you took to prove or disprove your hypothesis An analysis of your first research paper (the same material covered in your presentation) An analysis of your second research paper An analysis of your third research paper The design of your software A developer's manual for your project (i.e. exact instructions for how to compile the software) A user's manual for your software (i.e. exact instructions for how to run the software, how to use the UI, screen shots, etc.) The measurement data you collected An analysis of your data, showing how the data proves or disproves your hypothesis A discussion of possible future work A discussion of what you learned from the project A statement of what each individual team member did on the project List of references All software design descriptions, source code, test cases, input files, output files, test results, and so on that you developed during your investigation. These must be posted in a single archive file, either a JAR file, a ZIP file, or a TAR GZIP file. Grading Attendance is mandatory for everyone in the class during team presentations. I will take attendance in class on those dates. Attendance during team presentations is worth 5% of your final course grade. If you attend 5 or more of the 7 team presentation sessions, you will earn the full 5%. If you attend fewer than 5 team presentation sessions, your grade for attendance will be reduced proportionately. In other words, you can miss up to two team presentation sessions with no penalty. (I will not take attendance in class during lecture sessions.) Arriving late to class disrupts the presentation and is discourteous to the presenters. I will cut off the attendance sheet five minutes after the start of class. If you have not signed the attendance sheet by that time, I will mark you absent, and this will be reflected in your grade as stated above. 20% of your final course grade is based on the quality of your team's presentations. All team members will receive the same grade for each presentation. I will grade each of the four presentations on a 0-10 point scale, with 10 = outstanding, 1 = unacceptable, and 0 = absent. However, if your slides are not posted on the home page of your team web site before the class session in the form of a PDF file, I will reduce your grade for the presentation by 5 points. Each presentation will be allotted the amount of time stated above. I will give a warning 3 minutes before the end of the allotted time. If you are not finished with your presentation in the allotted time, I will cut off the presentation, and I will reduce the grade for your presentation by 2 points. Plan your presentation and delivery so you will be finished within the allotted time. 20% of your final course grade is based on the quality of your team's results as recorded in your team's final deliverables posted on your team web site. All team members will receive the same grade for results. I will grade your results on a 0-10 point scale, with 10 = outstanding, 1 = unacceptable, and 0 = not posted by the deadline. I will add your grade for each presentation and the deliverables, along with any comments I have, to your encrypted grade file. See the Course Policies and the Encrypted Grades for further information. Absences If you are absent from class when one of your team presentations is scheduled, you will receive a grade of zero for the presentation unless before the start of the class when the presentation is scheduled you make an alternate arrangement with me. I am normally willing to permit this only for absences due to illness or unforeseen personal emergency. However, if you feel you have a valid reason for your absence, please discuss it with me. Appointments, job interviews, career fairs, vacations, trips home, and other scheduled activities are not valid excuses for absence. You have an obligation to this course, and you must schedule other activities so as not to interfere with class sessions. Late Submissions If your team deliverables are not posted on the home page of your team web site in the proper format by the deadline, your team deliverables will be late and will receive a grade of zero. You may request an extension for posting your team deliverables. See the Course Policies for my policy on extensions. Plagiarism Each team presentation and the team deliverables must be entirely your team's own work. I will not tolerate plagiarism. If in my judgment any team presentation or the team deliverables is not entirely your team's own work, you will automatically receive, as a minimum, a grade of zero for the assignment. See the Course Policies for my policy on plagiarism. Distributed Systems 4005-730-01 Spring Quarter 2013 Course Page Alan Kaminsky • Department of Computer Science • Rochester Institute of Technology • 4486 + 2220 = 6706 Home Page Copyright © 2013 Alan Kaminsky. All rights reserved. Last updated 01-Mar-2013. Please send comments to ark­@­cs.rit.edu.