Topic outline

  • The introduction of cloud computing and the explosive growth of mobile computing and new online services brought also new ways of structuring computing systems: microservice architectures and serverless computing

    This course is targeted to students with basic understanding of service architectures and scalable architectures, and builds on top of that to look at what possibilities and new challenges microservice architectures and serverless computing brings on top of “classic” service architectures.

    The course is held on period IV (March to April) and is worth 5 credits (op). The work on the course consists of 4 hours of weekly online classroom, group work exercises, preparatory reading assignments, bi-weekly introspection essays, and a final report.

    Please note that while attendance apart from the first lecture is not mandatory, participation and activity during class contribute about 30-35% of the final grading. It is possible to pass the course without attending classes, but will still require participating in group activities and submitting the final report. For more detailed information on the course contents please see the syllabus.

    The 2021 course has a participant limit of at most 30 students. There may be a few drop-outs, so if you are left without a slot, please contact the teacher.

    The course language is English. The course material is in the form of lecture notes and material available openly on the Internet.

    Prerequisites

    Participants are expected to have knowledge about software development and related activities to it, including software design, web service programming and/or design, etc.

    Lectures

    There are two weekly classes:

    • Monday 10:15-12:00
    • Friday 10:15-12:00

    Exceptions:

    • No classes on Friday 2.4. and Monday 5.4. (Easter holidays)
    • Classes on Wednesday 31.3. and Wednesday 7.4. at 13:15-15:00

    Schedule (subject to change)

    1.3.
    Introduction
    5.3.
    Microservice ecosystem
    System design I
    8.3.
    System design II
    12.3.
    System design III
    Failures
    15.3.
    Service architecture I
    19.3.
    Service architecture II
    22.3.
    Service architecture III
    26.3.
    Configuration and discovery
    29.3.
    Scalability
    31.3.
    Deployment
    Service evolution
    7.4.
    Serverless
    9.4.
    Recap

    Location

    The course will be held online. Once you are enrolled, you can access the Zoom link from here: https://mycourses.aalto.fi/mod/zoom/view.php?id=692326

    The lectures are recorded and made available to enrolled students for the period of the course. The recording will be removed after the course has been graded.

    Enrolment

    Enrolment to the course is via Oodi: https://oodi.aalto.fi/a/opettaptied.jsp?OpetTap=1147626708&html=0.

    IMPORTANT! Enrolment is finalized only after the first lecture. In case there are people on a waiting list, those not present on the first lecture will be subject to a space-creation process.

    Contact and Communication

    Course teacher is Santeri Paavolainen (email santeri.paavolainen@aalto.fi). The teacher has office hours on Thursdays from 13 to 14. You can use the course Teams to call the teacher directly during that time. You can of course always send email or Teams messages at any time.

    The course has a dedicated Teams (you should find the link in the sidebar).