Title: Using Amazon Web Services to Teach Web-Enabled Database Concepts

David Rilett and John P. Russo, Wentworth Institute of Technology

Contact: John P. Russo, Department of Computer Science and Systems, 550 Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA 02215 Email:

Description:

Amazon offers cloud infrastructure through its Amazon Web Services(AWS). The authors taught a cloud computing course using AWS. Besides offering a general introduction to cloud computing, the course also enabled students to build a fault-tolerant web site with a database backend. Students were able to further hone their database skills by initially designing a database which would then be used by the web site to store information such as a shopping cart or payment information. The database itself was initially hosted on AWS using an instance running MySQL. Towards the end of the course, the students migrated their databases to the Relational Data Service (RDS) provided by Amazon. Additionally, students setup a virtual web server on several instances with S3 storage for all static content. Students also deployed an elastic load balancer which directs traffic to instances of the Web server. Figure 1 shows the initial design.

This demo will show the tools provided by Amazon Web Services which were used by students to implement this project. Attendees will gain insight into the type of tools available and how these can be used to teach a variety of concepts in addition to cloud computing topics. In addition, a sample project will be presented.

Biography:

John Russo is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Systems at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He teaches a variety of courses in both computer science and computer networking. His main topic of interest is database management systems, although he also has been developing some new courses in cloud computing and mobile application development. He holds a Masters degree in Mathematics from UMASS Lowell and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Boston University.

David Rilett is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Systems at Wentworth Institute of Technology. His main focus in his teaching is networking and programming. He has particularly been interested in the domain of Bioinformatics for the past few years. David holds a Master of Software Engineering degree from Brandeis University.

Supporting Material:

Links will be provided to the Amazon Web Services web site as well as information on how to apply for a teaching grant from Amazon. There will also be links provided to white papers on using S3 with a database, using an elastic load balancer and using Elastic Block Storage. All whitepapers are by Amazon.

Figure 1