Ateneo - UPO

Principles and current technical and methodological solutions for the design and management of systems, architectures, and distributed applications for Big Data analysis.

For the "Big Data Systems" part, there is no specific reference textbook. The teaching material consists of scientific articles, technical documentation and other material provided by the lecturer.
However, the following textbooks cover most of the topics covered in the first part of the course:
* M. van Steen and A.S. Tanenbaum, "Distributed Systems, 4th ed.," 2023 (freely downloadable from the website: https://www.distributed-systems.net).
* M. Kleppman, "Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems," O'Reilly, 2017.
* J. S. Damji, B. Wenig, T. Das, and D. Lee, "Learning Spark: Lightning-Fast Data Analytics, 2/E," O'Reilly, 2020.

For the "Rust Programming" part, there is no specific reference textbook. The teaching material consists of scientific articles, technical documentation and other material provided by the lecturer.

For the "Cloud Computing" part, the textbook can be downloaded from here: https://iris.uniupo.it/handle/11579/140999.

The course aims to illustrate the principles and current technical and methodological solutions for the design and management of systems, architectures, and distributed applications for Big Data analysis. In particular, the course addresses the various problems concerning the acquisition and processing of Big Data, by presenting the main solutions (both hardware and software) that have been proposed for their management. The course also introduces the Rust programming language and the peculiarities that make it suitable for Big Data processing. The course includes hands-on exercises in order to be able to combine the methodological and technological aspects seen in the classroom.

* Knowledge:
At the end of the course, the student will have learned the principles and the main technical and methodological solutions for the design and management of systems, architectures, and distributed applications for Big Data analysis as well as advanced programming concepts especially relating to static analysis (through types) of memory.

* Competences and skills:
At the end of the course, the student will have learned the knowledge to achieve the educational objectives, in the way measured by the examination grade. In particular, the student will be able to autonomously investigate topics related to systems and architectures for Big Data, and to use this knowledge to critically evaluate existing systems and applications as well as to tackle new problems, and to evaluate the appropriateness of their implementability in Rust.

Fundamentals of programming, database and operating systems.

Class lectures and hands-on lab lectures.

There are no mid-term exams.

Students with physical disabilities, Learning Disabilities or Special Education Needs can request specific services and tools to the Staff of the "Sviluppo e Coordinamento Carriere e Servizi alle Studentesse e agli Studenti", consulting the University webpage: https://www.uniupo.it/en/services/services-students-physical-or-learning-disabilities
Students with disabilities, learning disabilities or special education needs, once they have contacted the University Staff, can refer to the tutor in charge of the course to define the examination modalities, concerning academic aspects.

The final evaluation is established collegially by the teachers taking into account the knowledge and skills acquired by the student verified through the answers to a series of theoretical questions and exercises on the topics of the "Big Data Systems" part, the development of 7 or 8 practical exercises with related discussion on the topics covered in the "Rust Programming" part, and an oral exam and a practical exercise for "Cloud Computing" part: on each of the three components a minimum threshold must be achieved.
In particular, for the "Big Data Systems" part, each question is associated with a score with 30 as the maximum grade; to reach the passing grade it is necessary to obtain at least 18, while exceeding 30 allows the student to reach a score of 30 with honors.
For the "Rust Programming" part, passing is achieved if the student demonstrates that he/she has performed the exercises on his/her own. This is checked with a discussion in which the student is asked to develop a variation of some of the exercises, commenting the important decisions. The grade then depends on the programming style.
For "Cloud Computing", the student can decide for only an oral exam to get up to 25/30 or he/she can decide to provide and discuss a practical execese to get up to 30/30 with honors.
In the final evaluation, the part of "Big Data Systems" weighs 50%, that of "Rust Programming" for 25%, and finally that of "Cloud Computing" for 25%, according to the number of credits for the three parts.

The course consists of three parts:

1. "Big Data Systems" part (6 CFU):
- Introduction to Big Data: motivations, principles, issues and challenges
- Data acquisition systems.
- Distributed file systems and data stores.
- Cluster resource management systems.
- Batch processing systems
- Stream processing systems.

2. "Rust Programming" part (3 CFU):
- Introduction to Cloud Computing.
- Theory and practice on Google Cloud Platform.
- Theory and practice on Amazon Web Services.
- Theory and practice on OpenStack.

3. "Cloud Computing" part (3 CFU):
Introduction to Rust programming:
- Automatic memory management: ownership, borrowing and lifetime of references.
- Primitive and structured data types.
- Error handling and functional programming patterns.
- Generic types and traits
- Multithreading

* Knowledge and understanding:
At the end of the course, the student will have acquired the methodological knowledge to independently investigate topics related to systems and architectures for Big Data, and to use this knowledge to evaluate existing systems as well as to tackle new problems.

*Applying knowledge and understanding:
At the end of the course, the student will have learned the methodologies for the design and development of systems and applications for Big Data. Specifically, the student will be able to design and develop distributed, scalable, safe and efficient batch processing and data stream processing applications, using the main open-source frameworks for the ingestion, processing and storage of Big Data.

* Making judgments:
At the end of the course, the student will be able to independently identify the most suitable solutions to create distributed systems and applications for Big Data analysis and to evaluate both the architectural and implementation choices, and the performance of existing systems and applications for Big Data.

* Communication Skills:
At the end of the course, the student will have acquired the most suitable fluency in terminology related to systems and applications for Big Data analysis, will be able to present the architecture of a system for Big Data with appropriate technical terms and language and to argue critically about the various alternatives both at a system and application level.

* Learning Skills:
At the end of the course, the student will have acquired the methodological knowledge to independently investigate topics related to systems and architectures for Big Data, and to use this knowledge to evaluate existing systems, to tackle new problems as well as to evaluate advantages and disadvantages of choosing programming languages for the development.