For Recitation, Tuesday, May 9
In preparation, read "The TWA reservation system" by Gifford and Spector, reading #43, and read "When professional standards are lax: the CONFIRM failure and its lessons" by Oz, reading #44.
Your reading report should address the following question. Consider transaction processing in the TWA reservation system (reading #43). What framework is in place to support recovery from a crash? To mediate concurrent access to data? In terms of managing complexity, what benefits might TWA gain from using an approach like that of System R (reading #40)?
For Lecture, Wednesday, May 10
Last lecture. In preparation, read Chapters 5, 8, and 11 of the Mythical Man-Month by Brooks. Be prepared to discuss the chapters in tomorrow's recitation.
For Recitation, Thursday, May 11
In preparation, reread "Hints for computer system design" by B. Lampson, reading #8. In addition, read "Before the altair: the history of personal computing" by Press, reading #46 (the last reading!).
For Lecture, Monday, May 15
No class. Study for quiz III.
For Recitation, Tuesday, May 16
No reading assigned. No reading report due.
Quiz III, Wednesday, May 17
Quiz III will be in Walker from 2pm to 3pm. The quiz will be open book, like the previous quizzes. Material: everything from Lecture 17 through Recitation 24 (storage systems, file systems, fault-tolerance computing, transactions, and more complexity). Of course that material builds in various ways on things studied earlier so you shouldn't be surprised to find integrating questions.
We will make a handout with example questions and distribute it to the class. We will also provide a handout with the solutions to the example questions.
Recitation, Thursday, May 18
We will attempt to hand Quiz III with solutions back in recitation.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Terre des Hommes, 1939
In English: It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to take away.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Wind, Sand and Stars, 1939
(Chapter 3, The Tool)