The course provides a practical introduction to the concepts and paradigms of distributed systems using the example of web technologies and application development on the web. This initially involves an introduction of the world wide web with basic protocols such as HTTP and other standards in the context of the Internet. After that an introduction to the design and construction of web applications is provided. This includes firstly the frontend development with HTML5, CSS3 as well as client-side JavaScript and secondly the backend development with server-side JavaScript on the Node.js platform. Interactions between frontend and backend follow modern REST/HTTP and AJAX techniques. In addition, mechanisms for personalization with cookies and sessions as well as to authenticate users are presented. The course closes with a detailed discussion of web application security.

In preparation for individual lecture units, the self-study of basic content is required by means of the accompanying literature (relevant chapters will be announced in the event). Further independent work concerns the follow-up of the lecture contents and the exam preparation.

The course deals with the computational limits of modern computer systems, showing the undecidability and intractability of important problems.

Several computational conceps like Turing machines and WHILE-programs are presented. Other topics include the Church-Turing thesis, the theory of NP-completeness and zero-knowledge-proofs.

For this course some basics concerning theoretical computer science are required (regular languages, finite automata, O-calculus, etc.). This knowledge can be purchased in the lecture Theoretical Computer Science I.

This course will take place as a pure lecture. Numerous exercises deepen selected areas and will be discussed in tutorials.