Big Data Computing and Systems

You are encouraged to discuss the general aspects of a problem with others. However, anything you submit for credit must be entirely your own work and not copied, with or without modification, from any other person. If you share details of your work with anybody else then you are likely to be in breach of the University's General Course and Examination Regulations and/or Computer Regulations (both of which are set out in the University Calendar) and/or the Computer Science Department's policy (see section 9). The Department treats cases of dishonesty very seriously and, where appropriate, will not hesitate to notify the University Proctor.

If you need help with specific details relating to your work, or are not sure what you are allowed to do, then contact your tutors or lecturer for advice.

Lab assessment - 30%

In the labs students will practice the design and implementation of distributed algorithms and they will gain practical experience with contemporary Big Data and Cloud Computing frameworks such as Dask, Apache SPARK, MPI, CUDA and Google Cloud / Amazon Web Services. LO2, LO4, LO5


Project - 40%

In this series of artifacts, students will complete a short, application focused project. Students will analyze a big data set, which requires them to design a data processing flow, write progress reports, implement and test an appropriate distributed algorithm in an appropriate software framework, to critique their design and to communicate the design and analysis results in a professional manner in a written report. This assessment item addresses LO3, LO5, LO6


Final exam - 30%

The final exam will allow a summative assessment of learning outcomes related to the full semester. This can include theoretical aspects, algorithms, programming, and techniques covered in lectures and assignments. LO1, LO2, LO3, LO4

The Computer Science department's grading policy states that in order to pass a course you must meet two requirements:
1. You must achieve an average grade of at least 50% over all assessment items.
2. You must achieve an average mark of at least 45% on invigilated assessment items.

If you satisfy both these criteria, your grade will be determined by the following University-wide scale for converting marks to grades: an average mark of 50% is sufficient for a C- grade, an average mark of 55% earns a C grade, 60% earns a C+ grade and so forth. However if you do not satisfy both the passing criteria you will be given either a D or E grade depending on marks. Marks are sometimes scaled to achieve consistency between courses from year to year.

Students may apply for special consideration if their performance in an assessment is affected by extenuating circumstances beyond their control.

Applications for special consideration should be submitted via the Examinations Office website within five days of the assessment.

Where an extension may be granted for an assessment, this will be decided by direct application to the Department and an application to the Examinations Office may not be required.

Special consideration is not available for items worth less than 10% of the course.

Students prevented by extenuating circumstances from completing the course after the final date for withdrawing, may apply for special consideration for late discontinuation of the course. Applications must be submitted to the Examinations Office within five days of the end of the main examination period for the semester.

The topics covered in lectures will be organized generally with the following progression:

•Introduction: Big Data
•5 Vs (Variety, Velocity, Volume, Veracity, Value)
•Storage and networking architectures
•Divide and Conquer, Map, Reduce, Map/Reduce functional programming and DataFrames in Dask
•Algorithms in Dask: Group By, Union, Intersection, Difference, Matrix-Vector and Matrix-Matrix Multiplication
•Systems: SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, Google Cloud / Amazon Web Services, storage and networking architectures, virtual machines and their management, job scheduling, cloud resources
•Algorithms in Dask on cloud: Hashing, PageRank
•Data Processing: Distributed Data Structures, Graphs, Leader Election, Consensus
•Memory Hierarchy, Shared memory, Shared-nothing, distributed file systems, replication, communication cost, complexity theory
•Programming: Message-Passing (MPI)
•Programming: Threads, Locks and Atomics (CUDA)
•Programming: Work Queues, Schedulers, Streaming
•Heterogenous Processing: Systems and Programming

The course assumes that you are proficient in Python, as taught in COSC121, and in algorithm design and analysis, as taught in COSC262. If you are enrolling in DATA301 but haven't already passed COSC121 and COSC262 or the equivalents, you should consult the course supervisor before enrolling.

Please click HERE for the CSSE Department's policy for the academic remedy of applications for a special consideration for final exams.