CSC2006 Software Technologies Track

Coordinators:

Patricia MacBride, FNAL
Pere Mato, CERN 
 

This track presents modern techniques for software design and modern tools and technologies for understanding and improving existing software.  The emphasis will be placed on the large software projects and large executables that are common in HEP. The track will consist of lectures and exercises. The first series lectures cover a series of tools and techniques which will be exemplified during the initial series of exercises. These lectures will include topics such software engineering, design, methodology and testing.  The second series of lectures will focus on Web services, which constitutes the underlying techniques supporting a number of higher level services such as those offered by Grid Technologies.

In addition to pure software design and development issues, the track is complemented by two special yet essential topics: methods and techniques for improving computer security, and Internet quality of service and network performance.

In the exercise sessions, the students will have a chance to use the tools that are described in the lectures. They will work configuration management tools. They will be asked to use the test and debugging tools on some simple examples.

Overview

Series

Type

Lecture

Description

Lecturer
     

 

  

Tools and Techniques

 

 

 

Lectures

Lecture 1

Introduction to the Track

To start, we discuss some of the characteristics of software projects for high energy physics, and some of the issues that arise when people want to contribute to them. This forms the framework for the Software Technologies Track. We then continue with a brief introduction to software engineering from the perspective of the individual contributor, both as a formal process and how it actually effects what you do.

Bob Jacobsen

Lecture 2

Tools You Can Use

This lecture discusses several categories of tools & techniques you can use to make yourself more productive and effective. Continuous testing and documentation has proven to be important in producing high quality work, but it's often difficult to do; we discuss some available approaches. Many problems require specific tools and techniques to solve them effectively: We discuss the examples of performance tuning and memory access problems

Bob Jacobsen

Lecture 3

Tools for Collaboration

HEP software is built by huge teams. How can this be done effectively, while still giving people satisfying tasks to perform?
This lecture discusses some of the technical approaches used. Source control (e.g. CVS) is becoming common, so we just skim over it's advantages and disadvantages to get to the larger area of release control (e.g. CMT) and release testing & distribution. We'll focus on why is this considered a hard problem, and what are the current techniques for dealing with it.

Bob Jacobsen

Lecture 4

Software Engineering Across the Project

Now that we've covered both individual and group work, we go back to the software engineering topics of the first lecture to see how these fit together. How does our individual work effect the ability of the entire project to proceed? What are tools and techniques that will improve both our individual work, and out contributions to the whole?
We close with a summary of observations.

Bob Jacobsen

Exercises

Exercise 1
Exercise 2
Exercise 3
Exercise 4
Exercise 5

Exercises 1 and 2
The first two exercises provide some direct experience with the tools and techniques described in Lectures 1 and 2. In particular, pairs of students will work together to update existing applications, working through examples designed to show the strengths and weaknesses of several approaches.

Exercises 3 and 4
After the two-person teams acquire some experience with the CMT release system, and CVS if needed, we will have groups of 5 teams work together to create a functional release from individual sub-projects at various stages of completion. Although a limited exercise, this is intended to demonstrate some of the real issues discussed in the lecture.

Exercises 5
Wrap-up session.

Bob Jacobsen

 

 

 

 

 

Web services

 

Lectures

Lecture 1

Introduction to HTTP and XML

 The HTTP protocol, used by the World Wide Web has rapidly become one of the major protocols used for inter-computer communications on the internet and the messages exchanges are encoded in XML to facilitate the data manipulation. The presentation will give an overview of the technology, introduce the standards and the tools available.

Alberto Pace

Lecture 2

Introduction to Web Services, XMLRPC, SOAP

 Web Services are “computer-to-computer services” that are made available using Web technology. The two major standards for offering Web services (XMLRPC and SOAP) will be introduced and described, with few examples.

Alberto Pace

Exercises

Exercise 1
Exercise 2

Exercises on Web services

Alberto Pace

 

Prerequisite Knowledge

Desirable prerequisite

and references to further information

Lecture 1: Introduction to HTTP and XML

Basic understanding of TCP/IP and Internet Networking

References:

 

Lecture 2: Introduction to HTTP and XML

Basic understanding of HTTP and XML (Previous course)

References:

Exercises

Basic knowledge of the Python Programming language will be desirable

References:

Books

 

 

 

 

 

Computer Security

 

Lectures

Lecture 1

An Introduction to Cryptography

Computer security relies on a number of complementary technologies.  Cryptography is one of them. Unlike what is sometimes believed, cryptography's role i not only to ensure the confidentiality of exchanges. It also serves to protect the integrity of transmitted information, and more importantly in Grid environments to authenticate individuals and systems. The lecture describes he fundamentals of asymmetric encryption, and explain how it is implemented in the real world.

Alberto Pace

Lecture 2

An Introduction to PKI

Cryptography is not sufficient to ensure that secret information is safely shared. In particular, distributing cryptographic keys requires an infrastructure of logically connected systems. This is called Pubic Key Inftastructure and is the subject of this lecture.

Alberto Pace

Lecture 3

An Introduction to Kerberos

Kerberos is an alternative to PKI fro authentication. This third lecture explains the respective positioning and the differences. It also explains how the two technologies can be integrated. This is illustrated by practical examples drawn from web and mail services.

Alberto Pace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Networking QoS and   Performance

Lectures

Lecture 1

Internet QoS options

Improving Quality of Service guarantees and performances in data network is a key requirement of Grid computing. Indeed, fast transfers require high-bit rate connections, and grid operation requires network predictability and high availability. On the other hand, the Internet historical technology is not naturally best suited to deterministic behavior. This lecture explains the technical challenges and the range of options available to improve QoS guarantees in Internet-based networks.

François Fluckiger

Lecture 2

TCP and Congestion Control

Not only the underlying network has to be highly performing, but the network software running within the end-systems must have an optimal behavior. This lecture recalls the basics of TCP and discusses the relationships between TCP and the risks of congestions over Internet-based connections.

François Fluckiger

Lecture 3

Multimedia over the Internet

The Grid is not only a network of computer resources but also a network of people cooperating to use these resources. Part of the collaborative tools scientists are increasingly using include audio and video systems. They place new challenging requirements on the networking systems. The class discusses these requirements and their consequences on the end-systems as well as within the underlying network.

François Fluckiger

Prerequisite Knowledge

Mandatory prerequisite

For this series of lectures, there is no mandatory pre-requisite knowledge, as long as the participants are professional computer scientists.

 

 

Desirable prerequisite

and references to further information

 

The participants will draw maximum benefits from the lectures if they have a fair knowledge of computer network principles, in particular the concepts of

  • Networking layering

  • Internet transport infrastructure (e..g. mesh topology, routers, links)

  • Internet layers (e.g. differences between PPP, IP, UDP, TCP)

 

Books

  • Computer Networks, Ed. 4
    Andrew Tannenbaum, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-130-661023

  • Internetworking with TCP/IP, vol 1
    Douglas E. Commer, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-130-183806

  • Understanding Networked Multimedia
    Francois Fluckiger, Prentice Hall, ISBN 0-131-90992-4

Vikipedia

Computer Networking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networks)

Other Links

Linux-Networking Concepts