MSc in Web Applications and Services

The evolution of web-based technologies has now led to what is know as "Web 2.0": a semantically enriched information source with advanced potential to provide specialised software applications "on the fly". A plethora of standard PC-based applications is now appearing online (calendar and diary tools, text editors, spreadsheets, among other) that can be used in a distributed collaborative setting. Developing such applications is particularly challenging, partly due to the wide background required but also the rapid emergence of new technologies. This MSc is intended to equip students with a sound understanding of the area and its emerging trends, while at the same time providing a very hands-on approach to current technologies such as .Net.

Articles about Web Applications and Web Services can be found daily in the computer press, highlighting the fast development of this area in a technical sense, but also it's commercial relevance for businesses all over the world. One example is the article Web Services Market to Explode, which says:

The nascent market for Web services will swell dramatically over the next four years, spreading well into the global arena [...] Radicati Group's "Web Services Market 2004-2008" reports that the combined market for Web services solutions, management, integration and security will be worth $950 million in 2004. By 2008, that figure will climb to $6.2 billion.

This prediction has been confirmed by the article IBM has high hopes for Next Big Thing in software published by the Financial Times in April 2006:

IBM's business from service-oriented architecture has doubled over the past year [...] SOA [...] is seen as a fundamental architectural shift that will pull the industry out of its post-bubble slump.

This programme aims to support software engineering skills for applications that are distributed on the web, while familiarising students with the practical aspects of relevant software development environments and frameworks. This is achieved by a number of core modules and options drawn from computer science adressing the whole range from implementation to conceptual understanding.

In addition to the core modules that are shared by all programmes (CO7201 - Individual project, and CO7210 - Personal and Group Skills), this programme has four core modules:

CO7205 - Advanced System Design. Taking advantage of the business opportunities being made available by the Web requires new methods of building IT systems that rely not on big, integrated programs but on small, modular components. Not that software as we know it will disappear, but we need ways of modelling applications that can shop around for services provided by external parties and bind to them at run time to fulfil business needs. Stuart Feldman, from IBM, offered The Economist the following view of software production in the new age of web applications: "Plenty of code will still be needed to make the new world of computing run, just as mainframe computers are still around, though in a much less dominant position. But the computer business will no longer revolve around writing big, stand-alone programs. Instead, it will concentrate on using software to create all kinds of electronic services, from simple data storage to entire business processes."

CO7215 - Advanced Web Technologies. This module covers the very practical aspect of implementing service oriented systems using Microsoft's .net technologies. It familiarises the student with skills and tools that are directly relevant to industry, while also introducing more advanced aspects such as business processes and their implementation in BPEL.

CO7216 - Semantic Web. As the industry strives towards assembling applications at run-time from smaller components, it is no longer sufficient to have interfaces matching (a syntactic aspect) and humans deciding on whether the component fulfils the required task (has the right meaning, or semantics). It becomes predominant that machines can make the decision on the semantic aspect and hence a plethora of requirements open up: how can the semantics of components be captured, how can decisions be made, etc. Semantic web technologies introduce this capability.

CO7214 - Service-Oriented Architectures. “This is the industrial revolution for software,” said Toby Redshaw, vice-president of information technology strategy at Motorola, the US electronics group, to the Financial Times in January 2005. He was talking about the rise of service-oriented architectures (SOAs). The software industry has been quick to sense an opportunity in SOAs. Big software companies such as BEA Systems, IBM, Oracle and Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon 4 years ago. Since then, they have been joined by a host of start-ups offering products to help manage SOAs. According to Peter Sondergaard, Gartner's head of research, chief information officers' (CIO's) are being urged to move away from siloed IT and re-organise the infrastructure as a series of processes that link business operations: "CIO's should put service-oriented architectures - the process whereby applications and data render software components as services, thereby speeding project deployments and application changes - at the top of their agendas".

You will need to take three additional modules, of which at most two can be from the supplementary list (see Course Structure).

Typical modules that you can choose on the software engineering side are: Domain Specific Languages, Software Process Engineering and Generative Development.

	computer science
	HOME	MAP	CONTACT

computer science

PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS

MSc in Web Applications and Services

Outline

The market

Programme structure

Core modules

Optional modules

\| \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|
Author: Computer Science MSc Admissions (csmsc@mcs.le.ac.uk). © University of Leicester 24-Jan-2008. Last modified: 25th May 2008, 22:35:46. CS Web Maintainer. This document has been approved by the Head of Department.