CIS 309: Client/Server and Net-Centric Computing
Fall 2002

Welcome to CIS 309.   Your instructor is David Lefkovitz.  I can be reached at

· Office            315 Wachman Hall

· Telephone     215-204-5550

· e-mail lefkovitz@cis.temple.edu

The TA's name is Min Zhao

· Net-centric computing

The subject of net-centric computing spans a spectrum from static html web pages to the development and control of distributed, multi-tier components, including transaction/database oriented processing. Figure 1 illustrates this spectrum.

Figure 1: The Spectrum of Net-centric Computing

· Course Objective

This course will include the entire spectrum of Figure 1, including transaction and database interaction. However, the principal focus of the course will be on the bottom two levels, distributed, multi-tier components and middleware. These will be taught via Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) technology.  The DBMS will be the Microsoft SQL Server.

You can think of a component as a class that has methods and attributes.  In the course we will often refer to them as COM objects.   These are instantiations of the class that can be deployed to run on a machine that may be standalone or connected to a network or the internet.  The network connections are of major interest to us in this course, which gives rise to the concept of a distributed component, or DCOM.

· Tools and Languages

The course will make use of a number of software development tools and several languages.  The tools are

· Visual Interdev and FrontPage for ASP and HTML page development and web management

· The Visual Basic development environment for VB and COM object development

· COM+ for COM object deployment and transaction control

The languages are HTML, ASP, VBscript, JavaScript, SQL and VB.  We will also introduce you to XML.

· Textbooks

Required

Microsoft Commerce Solutions Web Technology, by Micro Modeling Associates, Published by Microsoft Press, 1999. ISBN: 0-7356-0579-3.

Optional, but recommended book for ASP

ASP 2.0 Programmer’s Reference, by Alex Federov, et al, WROX Press, 1998. ISBN:1-861002-45-9

· Grading

Grading is described in the Lab Schedule.

· The Course Map

Most of the information that you will need for this course can be obtained by a navigation process through the Course Map.  This map contains the following sections:

· Syllabus

· WebBoard Setup

· Schedules

o Lecture

o Lab Assignment

o Accounts

· Reference Material

· The WebBoard

We will use a bulletin board product called the WebBoard for most of our multilateral class communication.  Browse to the WebBoard Setup and then set up your WebBoard account.  The WebBoard enables the instructor and anyone in the class to post messages for the rest of the class.  In the setup you should choose the option that automatically e-mails the posting to you, so that you don't have to rely on going to the WebBoard to get the latest messages.  For bilateral communication there is, of course, e-mail.  Certain pages, like this home page, will contain a blue button at the top labeled Class Interaction, that will take you immediately to the WebBoard.  The Course Map also has such a button at the top. You might also want to create a browser bookmark to the WebBoard (interact.cis.temple.edu/~cis309) and to the Course Map pages.

· Schedules

The Lecture Schedule presents a series of units and recommended textbook readings and links to more detailed lecture material.  It may be helpful particularly from Unit 2 onward, to print the lecture notes before coming to class and maintaining them in a loose leaf book. In this way, you can annotate them during the lecture and add new material that you create yourself or might acquire from the web references or the Tool help systems.

The Lab Assignment Schedule presents the lab and due dates for the lab assignments.  The labs are divided into 9 projects. The schedule links to descriptions of each lab project.

· Accounts

The Accounts describe 3 type of accounts that are assigned to each student: (1) The NT account where the project programs are stored, (2) Web account, where .htm and .asp web pages are stored, and (3) a SQL Server database, where your database tables are stored.

· Reference Material

Finally, the Reference Material section will give you some hard copy references and will link to online reference material. You should also search the web for additional, and possibly better, references for the languages that you do not know, such as ASP, VBScipt and JavaScript. If you find better references than the ones provided, please send the urls to the Instructor.

Good Luck and enjoy the course.