COMPSCI 335 : Web Programming and Distributed Services

Science

2024 Semester Two (1245) (15 POINTS)

Course Prescription

Covers web programming concepts, with applications to data integration from heterogeneous and asynchronous collections. Building web and cloud clients and services, with emphasis on high-level declarative and functional techniques. Dynamic web applications. Security and performance as overarching factors of web application development.

Course Overview

The key focus of this course is web application development, both from a server perspective (i.e., backend) and a client perspective (i.e., frontend). By the end of the course, you will be expected to have an appreciation of full-stack development.
This course is for students seeking to:
  1. Build the ability to design and create complex real-world web applications;
  2. Gain an appreciation of secure web application development;
  3. Extend their design space with techniques relating to client-server paradigm;
  4. Learn modern ways to integrate data from local and remote sources, using multi-paradigm techniques.
The required preparation mentions 15 points from COMPSCI 230 and 15 points from other COMPSCI stage 2 courses. COMPSCI 230 is needed because it introduces a complementary paradigm, object-oriented programming, and for its more general software development skills. For the other COMPSCI stage 2 course, we highly recommend COMPSCI 215, for its background in networking and security.
For illustrations and practical work, this course mostly uses browser applications, HTML, CSS, Javascript, and SVG, C# as available in .NET Core.
Upon successful completion of this course, you will be prepared to take postgraduate courses such as COMPSCI 711 and 732. This course also helps you with a number of fundamental development techniques and practices, and enables you to gain transferrable skills so that you can be industry-ready and future-proof your career in the context of modern multi-paradigm languages.

Course Requirements

Prerequisite: COMPSCI 230 and 15 points at Stage II in Computer Science, or SOFTENG 281

Capabilities Developed in this Course

Capability 3: Knowledge and Practice
Capability 4: Critical Thinking
Capability 5: Solution Seeking
Capability 6: Communication
Capability 7: Collaboration
Graduate Profile: Bachelor of Science

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to:
  1. Develop and demonstrate the building blocks of web development (Capability 3 and 5)
  2. Create complex real-world web applications (Capability 3 and 4)
  3. Evaluate various security aspects of web applications (Capability 3, 4 and 5)
  4. Assess the performance of web applications (Capability 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7)
  5. Explain and evaluate the design and development of web applications (Capability 3, 4, 5 and 6)
  6. Explain and apply fundamental functional concepts (Capability 3, 4, 5 and 6)
  7. Apply high-level operations on aggregates, including high-order functions (Capability 3, 4 and 5)

Assessments

Assessment Type Percentage Classification
Assignments 30% Individual Coursework
Quizzes 70% Individual Coursework
Assessment Type Learning Outcome Addressed
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Assignments
Quizzes

A pass in the total of the quiz component is required, as well as an overall pass in the assessment total.

Tuākana

Tuākana Science is a multi-faceted programme for Māori and Pacific students providing topic specific tutorials, one-on-one sessions, test and exam preparation and more. Explore your options at
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/science/study-with-us/pacific-in-our-faculty.html
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/science/study-with-us/maori-in-our-faculty.html

Key Topics

  • Building blocks of web development: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript
  • Scalable vector graphics
  • XML schema
  • Secure web development
  • Web application performance
  • delegate, lambdas
  • Object-relational-mapper
  • Language Integrated Query (LINQ)
  • Web APIs development
  • Authentication and authorization of Web APIs

Special Requirements

The quizzes will be held in the computer labs on Saturday 24th of August and Saturday 12th of October. If these two dates do not suit you, please do not enroll in this course. We will not be able to offer alternative dates for the quizzes.

Workload Expectations

This course is a standard 15-point course and students are expected to spend 10 hours per week involved in each 15-point course that they are enrolled in.

For this course, you can expect:

  • 3 hours of lectures
  • 1-7 hours of reading and reflection
  • 1-7 hours of work on assignments and/or quiz preparation

Delivery Mode

Campus Experience

Attendance is expected at scheduled activities including tutorials to complete components of the course.
Lectures will be available as recordings. Other learning activities including tutorials will be available as recordings.
The course may include live online events including tutorials.
Attendance on campus is required for the exam.
The activities for the course are scheduled as a standard weekly timetable.

This course may be taken remotely, excluding tests and exams, if you meet Ministry of Health guidelines and receive an exemption, or are unable to attend because of border restrictions.

Learning Resources

Course materials are made available in a learning and collaboration tool called Canvas which also includes reading lists and lecture recordings (where available).

Please remember that the recording of any class on a personal device requires the permission of the instructor.

Reading Material:

  • Required reading for the course will be based on material freely available online
  • A reading list will be made available with lectures
Software:

  • Main software development: .NET Core
  • Some parts of assignments may require access to Windows OS.

Student Feedback

During the course Class Representatives in each class can take feedback to the staff responsible for the course and staff-student consultative committees.

At the end of the course students will be invited to give feedback on the course and teaching through a tool called SET or Qualtrics. The lecturers and course co-ordinators will consider all feedback.

Your feedback helps to improve the course and its delivery for all students.

There will be more challenging assessments based on the feedback.

Other Information

Being a practical course, parts of the course may use a flipped classroom whereby students are expected to learn concepts using pre-recorded lectures and do practical work during lecture hours with support from teaching staff.

Deadlines for assessments are strictly enforced.

Academic Integrity

The University of Auckland will not tolerate cheating, or assisting others to cheat, and views cheating in coursework as a serious academic offence. The work that a student submits for grading must be the student's own work, reflecting their learning. Where work from other sources is used, it must be properly acknowledged and referenced. This requirement also applies to sources on the internet. A student's assessed work may be reviewed for potential plagiarism or other forms of academic misconduct, using computerised detection mechanisms.

Sharing assignment solutions and source code does not help learning. Consequently, our academic integrity policy does not permit sharing of solutions or source code leading to solutions, nor does it allow sourcing solutions or source code from any third party. Violation of this will result in your assignment submission attracting no marks, and you may face further disciplinary action. Therefore, please do not share assignments, assignment solutions and/or source code leading to assignment solutions, or use material from others in your assignments. You must NOT publish assignments or solutions in any form online at ANY time. There are also copyright and IP issues. Please come talk to us if you have any doubts about what is legitimate and what is not.

You can refer to online tutorials and resources such as ChatGPT for learning. However, you must implement the solutions yourself based on what you learnt from those sources. You are not allowed to copy any solution or part thereof obtained from these sources.

Don't leave your computers, devices, and belongings unattended – you must secure these at all times to prevent anyone from having access to your assignments or solutions.

You must understand the academic integrity expectations of the School of Computer Science available at http://academicintegrity.cs.auckland.ac.nz/

Class Representatives

Class representatives are students tasked with representing student issues to departments, faculties, and the wider university. If you have a complaint about this course, please contact your class rep who will know how to raise it in the right channels. See your departmental noticeboard for contact details for your class reps.

Copyright

The content and delivery of content in this course are protected by copyright. Material belonging to others may have been used in this course and copied by and solely for the educational purposes of the University under license.

You may copy the course content for the purposes of private study or research, but you may not upload onto any third party site, make a further copy or sell, alter or further reproduce or distribute any part of the course content to another person.

You are not allowed to publish at any time any solutions you develop for any of the assignments used in this course. 

Inclusive Learning

All students are asked to discuss any impairment related requirements privately, face to face and/or in written form with the course coordinator, lecturer or tutor.

Student Disability Services also provides support for students with a wide range of impairments, both visible and invisible, to succeed and excel at the University. For more information and contact details, please visit the Student Disability Services’ website http://disability.auckland.ac.nz

Special Circumstances

If your ability to complete assessed coursework is affected by illness or other personal circumstances outside of your control, contact a member of teaching staff as soon as possible before the assessment is due.

If your personal circumstances significantly affect your performance, or preparation, for an exam or eligible written test, refer to the University’s aegrotat or compassionate consideration page https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/academic-information/exams-and-final-results/during-exams/aegrotat-and-compassionate-consideration.html.

This should be done as soon as possible and no later than seven days after the affected test or exam date.

Learning Continuity

In the event of an unexpected disruption, we undertake to maintain the continuity and standard of teaching and learning in all your courses throughout the year. If there are unexpected disruptions the University has contingency plans to ensure that access to your course continues and course assessment continues to meet the principles of the University’s assessment policy. Some adjustments may need to be made in emergencies. You will be kept fully informed by your course co-ordinator/director, and if disruption occurs you should refer to the university website for information about how to proceed.

The delivery mode may change depending on COVID restrictions. Any changes will be communicated through Canvas.

Student Charter and Responsibilities

The Student Charter assumes and acknowledges that students are active participants in the learning process and that they have responsibilities to the institution and the international community of scholars. The University expects that students will act at all times in a way that demonstrates respect for the rights of other students and staff so that the learning environment is both safe and productive. For further information visit Student Charter https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/students/forms-policies-and-guidelines/student-policies-and-guidelines/student-charter.html.

Disclaimer

Elements of this outline may be subject to change. The latest information about the course will be available for enrolled students in Canvas.

In this course students may be asked to submit coursework assessments digitally. The University reserves the right to conduct scheduled tests and examinations for this course online or through the use of computers or other electronic devices. Where tests or examinations are conducted online remote invigilation arrangements may be used. In exceptional circumstances changes to elements of this course may be necessary at short notice. Students enrolled in this course will be informed of any such changes and the reasons for them, as soon as possible, through Canvas.