Distributed Systems

Department

Bachelor's program Digital Business & Software Engineering

Course unit code

DiBSE-B-5-VSY-VSY-ILV

Number of ECTS credits allocated

5.0

Name of lecturer(s)

Mode of delivery

blended learning

Recommended optional program components

none

Recommended or required reading

Books:
- Tanenbaum, A. S., & van Steen, M. (2016). Distributed systems: Principles and paradigms (2nd ed.). Leiden: Maarten van Steen.
- Coulouris, G. F. (2012). Distributed systems: Concepts and design (5th ed.). Harlow: Pearson Education.
- Kleppmann, M. (2017). Designing data-intensive applications: The big ideas behind reliable, scalable, and maintainable systems. Sebastopol: O'Reilly.
- Kshemkalyani, A. D., & Singhal, M. (2011). Distributed computing: Principles, algorithms, and systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Özsu, M. T., & Valduriez, P. (2011). Principles of distributed database systems (3rd ed.). Computer science. New York, NY: Springer.

Journals:
- iX - Magazin für professionelle Informationstechnik (www.heise.de/ix)

Level of course unit

Bachelor

Year of study

Fall 2025

Semester when the course unit is delivered

5

Language of instruction

English

Learning outcomes of the course unit

Students gain a basic understanding of the types and architectures of distributed systems. They can understand the possibilities, limitations and risks of distributed systems. Furthermore, they are able to analyze the complexity, scalability and fault tolerance and solve complex problems independently. Students gain a very basic understanding of IT security in distributed systems.

Course contents

• Types of distributed systems
• Transparency and scalability
• Architectures
• Processes
• Communication
• Synchronization in distributed environments
• Naming
• Consistency and replication
• Reliability
• Security in distributed systems
• Peer-to-Peer Systems (Distributed Hash Table, ...)

Planned learning activities and teaching methods

The course comprises an interactive mix of lectures, discussions and individual and group work.

Work placement(s)

none