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Web and Mobile Application Development

Goal for course: become familiar with architecture, design, and implementation of web and mobile applications, including a server component.

Question: what, specifically, do you want to do in the course? We're flexible.

Course overview

Semester project: design and implement a client/server system supporting both web and mobile user interfaces. 65% of grade.
Individual homework assignments: to gain experience with concepts and techniques we are covering. 30% of grade
Attendance and participation: 5% of grade

Communicate over a network
- Often asynchronously: sending message, processing on server, and receiving response may be lengthy. Client may need to do other work while transaction is pending.
Store and access persistent data
- So, there is typically a database involved on the server side.
One server may support many clients
- Server will handle many requests concurrently. Must be careful about accessing and updating shared data.
One server may not suffice if there are a large number of clients!
- May need to replicate servers: any server may handle a request from any client.
- Issue: load balancing.
We typically want high availability
- Try to avoid the failure of any single component of the system causing the entire system to fail.
- Must build redundancy into the system, so that when a component (e.g., a server) fails its work can be transparently handled by other components.
- This is a tough problem when you have a central database. It becomes a central point of failure. Clustered (redundant) databases can be employed.

Historically, lots of custom/specialized protocols were used to implement client/server systems.

Today, the web, and its protocol, HTTP, are used predominantly.