TCSS 462/562:
(Software Engineering for)
Cloud Computing
TCSS 462/562: |
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Cloud Software Design Analysis Term Project TCSS 462/562 will feature a team-based term project focused on building a serverless cloud native application or a related cloud application. Students have the opportunity to propose a term project topic, or work on an assigned project. Please note that this course focuses more on learning new cloud technologies and the differences with cloud software development, as opposed to traditional software engineering concepts. Term projects should include a performance and cost analysis. Students will build prototype-quality cloud software to perform a performance and cost evaluation to contrast design tradeoffs of alternative cloud services and software architectures. Students will learn about new cloud technology as well as analytical skills important for work in industry. For example, while working as a software engineer, for a given software application, would it be better to leverage a relational database service such as Amazon's RDS? Or would the more performant and cost effective solution involve deploying and managing a database using a virtual machine hosted by Amazon EC2? With cloud computing, there are many ways to implement backend application architectures. Good analytical skills to assess performance and cost of system implementations are essential. This course aims to explore new cloud technologies while teaching evaluation skills to help aspiring software engineers and cloud architects make good design choices when developing cloud systems. NO Midterm or Final Exam This quarter with TCSS 462/562 offered as an in-person class with lectures streamed online and recorded. There will be NO Midterm or Final Exam. In lieu of exams, there will be 2 in-person quizzes offered at roughly in week 5, and week 8. Quizzes will will allow the use of notes and books. Quizzes will cover material from the class lectures as well as tutorials. Make-up quizzes will not be offered. Addressing a missed quiz for reasons such as illness requires making arrangements with the instructor. The term project serves in place of a final exam. The term project provides groups with the opportunity to aggregate together all skills learned throughout the course for the final project. Other assessment used in the course includes project status reports, in-class activities, class presentations, and tutorials. Class Presentations For TCSS 562: During the quarter, graduate students will form groups of 2 to 3 students and prepare and deliver in-class presentation. Presentations must be in-person and LIVE. No exceptions. Presentations will be scheduled during week 9 or 10 of the course. Groups will choose to present either: (1) A CLOUD TECHNOLOGY SHARING PRESENTATION: where the focus is on presenting a specific cloud computing service or technology including a demonstration of how to use the service which exercises the user interface and/or programmer APIs Examples include: Amazon EFS, Amazon RDS, FaaS platforms besides those presented in class, CaaS platforms, IaaS platforms besides AWS EC2, object-storage besides Amazon S3, Heroku, Serverless Databases (e.g. Dynamo DB and others), Elastic BeanStalk, Azure DocumentDB, Azure BlobStorage, and many many others. Consult the instructor for suggestions. --OR-- (2) A REVIEW OF A CLOUD-COMPUTING RELATED RESEARCH PAPER: The idea is to present the key contributions of the paper while critiquing strengths and weaknesses. For TCSS 462: In lieu of giving an in-class presentation, TCSS 462 students will submit peer reviews of class presentations. To receive full credit, students should submit a minimum of 4 peer reviews (approximately 1 per day) of the presentations. Presentation peer reviews will be completed using a worksheet provided by the instructor. In addition to the reviews, students will write two questions about content in the presentation. These can be questions to help clarify content from the presentation that was not clear, or any related questions inspired by the presentation. To ensure intellectual depth of questions, questions should not have yes-no answers. These questions will be captured by the presentation peer review worksheet. For TCSS 562: On days TCSS 562 students do not deliver a presentation they will submit a minimum of 1 peer review per day, for a total of 3 peer reviews for the quarter. Peer review structure will follow as described above. Extra Credit: TCSS 462 students can optionally give a class presentation in groups of 2 or 3 as described above to earn 3% extra credit added to the overall course grade. A maximum of 5 extra credit slots are available on a first come, first serve basis. Interested students should contact the instructor as early as possible to express interest. A presentation waiting list will be used if all slots fill. Tutorials and Readings This course offers many tutorials that assume only limited to no background with cloud computing. Tutorials are incremental in that they build off knowledge gained from previous tutorials. Completing tutorials provides the necessary background to complete the term project and to progress towards completing an MS Capstone or Thesis project in Cloud Computing. Weekly suggested readings will be posted to the schedule page, and tutorials throughout the quarter are posted on the assignments page. For TCSS 462: The lowest tutorial grade will be automatically dropped. Grading Policy Weights are assigned to the different elements of the course as listed below. Points are added up at the end of the quarter and weighted accordingly to determine a total percentage score. The percentage score is translated into a final decimal point (4.0 max) grade.
UW Grading Scale 
Due Dates / Submitting Assignments All assignments are due at 11:59 PM on the due date unless specified otherwise. There is a 48-hour grace period on all late assignments. These assignments will be marked as late in Canvas, and the cumulative timeliness of assignments may be referred to for grade curving/rounding decisions or for future employer/letters of recommendation, etc. Assignments submitted on the third day will receive a 5% late penalty. Assignments submitted on the fourth day will receive a 15% late penalty. Late submissions more than 96 hours late will receive a zero score without prior arrangement with the instructor. When possible, assignments will be posted at least two weeks prior to the due date. The details of each homework will be posted HERE. Completed homeworks will be submitted through Canvas. Academic Integrity and Collaboration Policy To quote the UWT statement of values, "our fundamental purpose is to educate students for life as global citizens." Students are active participants in their education and are expected to uphold high standards of academic conduct. Any action that subverts the educational process or misrepresents student knowledge and abilities constitutes academic dishonesty. In this course some assignments and all quizzes, exams, etc. must be completed individually. When collaboration is permitted for an assignment, this will be noted in the instructions. With respect to student collaboration, these actions are acceptable:
THINK TWICE - BEFORE CHEATING, if you should find yourself in a situation where you are considering copying work of another student or engaging in acacdemic misconduct, rather than doing so, please think twice. Students are STRONGLY encouraged to reach out to faculty for additional help or deadline extensions. As a faculty, I would much rather provide a deadline extension or additional help/tutoring on an assignment, than file an academic misconduct report with the Office of Student Conduct. Ultimately, cheating is not only counterproductive in side-stepping learning goals, but it also hurts the value and credibility of your UW Tacoma degree. |