CS6675 Advanced Internet Application Development

Course Introduction

Attention: The information contained in this page is subject to changes.

Instructor: Professor Ling Liu
Office: KACB 3340, Phone: 5-1139, Email: lingliu AT cc.gatech.edu

This is a graduate level class on Advanced Internet Application Development. The syllabus covers a wide range of topics and in this semester we will concentrate on systems and software issues that are critical for building advanced Internet-scale application systems, including web servers, web proxies, application servers, search engines, and a number of prominent Internet application areas.

You are encouraged to participate in the class as much as feasible. In fact, your input will be important for each aspect of the class, from its format, content, to evaluation criteria. The following are my suggestions. Modifications may be made by agreement in class.

Course Structure: There are no required text books in this course. Course notes and course readings will form the central material for the course. Class readings will consists of materials either handed out in class or made available via the class WWW page. Materials not presented in any readings and handouts may also be covered in class, therefore your attendance is important. The course will consist of two 80-minute lectures per week with weekly reading and homework assignments.

You are encouraged to complete your assignment by incorporating your own experience with the issues you address. You can certainly use what you learned in class as background knowledge.

Reading Summaries
Reading summaries count 15% of your total grade. You are required to submit to TA one reading summary per week. Late summaries will not be accepted. For reading summary requirement and template see Course Readings. Here are some specific guidelines about the grading of reading summaries:

Reading summaries are to be marked pass (P), pass plus (P+), and pass minus ((P-). A pass represents a good summary to the assigned reading. Typically, a reviewer is to be supportive of the writer and to provide constructive feedback. You are encouraged to provide critical feedback that is well founded, but be sensitive to the way in which you write it. Poorly worded criticism will be graded negatively if we find it.
The pass minus grade is to be assigned in limited circumstances in which either the summary is incomplete (e.g., one component is left uncommented completely) or it is clear from the summary that the student did not read the material or the summary contains poorly worded criticism. Pass minus will be given with a written explanation to the student.
The pass plus grade should be given to a summary in which the student goes beyond a basic review and presents insight that is thoughtful and well expressed.
In principle, very few pass minus grades are given, and the number of pass plus grades will vary significantly depending on the reading, as some readings are more provocative than the others.
Cooperation and discussion on assigned course readings are allowed, but verbatim copies of the same summary will be considered cheating. So you may talk about the readings as much as you like with one another, but each student is responsible for writing his/her own summary. If text is copied from another source, you should credit the source by referencing the source correctly. Verbatim copying from uncredited sources is plagiarism. If a case of plagiarism or any form of academic dishonesty is found, the guilty parties involved will receive a zero score for the assignment. Repeated offenders will be referred to the Dean's office.

Project
Your project should be significant (non-trivial) and relevant to the course ( in some way related to advanced Internet application development). Generally speaking, you can propose anything you wish: implementation, benchmarking, evaluation, interesting Internet applications, etc. People from companies may propose projects related to their work. However, all the project related material must not be proprietary, i.e., I will not sign any non-disclosure agreement just to evaluate a project.

Project will count 50% of your total grade. The grading of your project consists of three components:

Project Proposal and project presentation each count towards 20% of total project grade,
Final Project (incl. demo, project deliverable quality) count towards 60% of total grade.

The project proposal is due in the fourth or five weeks of the semester. Based on the proposal, I will negotiate with you the goals of the project, the evaluation criteria, and plan for its execution. After you have completed your proposal, I will schedule a meeting with each student or group to discuss the status of your projects. The project is due by the last week of the semester, with a demo, program listing, documentation, including a project report. Particularly interesting projects may be extended into Spring for research project credits (cs8903 special problems) or Master theses. Talk with me if you are interested.

All project presentations are scheduled at the CS6675 workshop on Advanced Internet Application Development. The workshop will be held in consecutive lectures at the end of the semester. Each presentation will be limited to 15-20 minutes, including 5 minutes question time. The workshop schedule will be posted on the Web and outside the instructor's office. Both the quality of your in-class presentation and the quality of your class participation are important measures for the grading of project presentation.

For people without particular inspiration, you are encouraged to discuss with me to define a reasonable project.

Class Participation will be judged primarily by the quality of interaction rather than quantity. Classes are designed to be interactive with plenty of opportunities for discussion on the papers and the real-world problems brought up by students.

Technology Review The technology review topics can be selected based on the weekly lecture theme covered in the course as well as papers assigned for reading. The technology review topic can also be combined with the theme of your course project though it is not required. For example, one can choose a Web search course project and a technology review on RFID. The technology review should cover the state of art in the chosen Internet technology area with a list of references. The technology review should also contain one discussion section describing your thought and your prediction of the technology in terms of its impact in the next 10-20 years after surveying this specific technology area. The expected length of the technology review is 10~15 pages. Figures are welcome.

Office hours: Most of the time I will be available for answering questions 1 hour before class. Email (lingliu AT cc.gatech.edu) is the best way to get a quick answer. Appointments for meetings other than office hours are possible upon request.

CS6675 Advanced Internet Application Development

Course Introduction

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