WPI 2003-2004 Graduate Catalog Web Ware Description

This course provides an overview of various technologies related to the World Wide Web (WWW), with detailed treatment of selected topics. The topics covered include: networking aspects of WWW, TCP, HTTP, and DNS protocols, architecture of Web sites, load balancing, caching, proxy servers, reverse and transparent proxying, JSP and other approaches to producing dynamic content, HTML forms and state maintenance on the Web, DHTML (CSS, JavaScript, DOM), XML and related technologies, graphics and streaming media, network security issues.

Students in this course will be expected to pick up at least one new programming/scripting language mostly on their own and complete a substantial programming project (or a series of smaller projects). It would be helpful if students are already familiar with networking and operating system aspects and have done respective programming projects. This is not a strict requirement, however, and most of the necessary details will be covered in the course. Students should also expect to be asked to read research papers on various WWW aspects and give class presentations.