Building web-based services for practical exercises in parallel and distributed computing

The paper presents an approach to the design and implementation of web-based environments for practical exercises in parallel and distributed computing (PDC). The presented approach introduces minimal development and operational costs by relying on Everest, a general-purpose platform for building co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of parallel and distributed computing Vol. 118; pp. 177 - 188
Main Author: Sukhoroslov, Oleg
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier Inc 01.08.2018
Subjects:
Parallel and distributed computing education
Platform as a service
Program testing
Programming assignments
Web services
Web-based environment
Programming assignments
Web-based environment
Web services
Platform as a service
Program testing
Parallel and distributed computing education
ISSN:0743-7315, 1096-0848
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The paper presents an approach to the design and implementation of web-based environments for practical exercises in parallel and distributed computing (PDC). The presented approach introduces minimal development and operational costs by relying on Everest, a general-purpose platform for building computational web services. The flexibility of proposed service-oriented architecture enables the development of different types of services targeting various use cases and PDC topics. The generic execution services support the execution of different types of parallel and distributed programs on corresponding computing systems, while the assignment evaluation services implement the execution and evaluation of solutions to programming assignments. As was demonstrated by teaching two introductory PDC courses, the presented approach helps to enhance students’ practical experience while avoiding low-level interfaces, reducing the grading time and providing a level of automation necessary for scaling the course to a large number of students. In contrast to other efforts, the exploited Platform as a Service model provides the ability to quickly reuse this approach by other PDC educators without installation of the Everest platform. •A service-based environment for practical exercises in PDC is introduced.•A flexible implementation with low development and operational costs is presented.•A practical experience and services developed for various PDC topics are described.•The presented approach is evaluated and contrasted with traditional approaches.
ISSN:0743-7315
1096-0848
DOI:10.1016/j.jpdc.2018.02.024