The study of algorithms is a fundamental aspect of computing. This unit of study covers data structures, algorithms, and gives an overview of the main ways of computational thinking from simple list manipulation and data format conversion, up to shortest paths and cycle detection in graphs. Students will gain essential knowledge in computer science, including basic concepts in data structures, algorithms, and intractability, using paradigms such as dynamic programming, divide and conquer, greed, local search, and randomisation, as well NP-hardness.

Programming in a legible, maintainable, reusable way is essential to solve complex problems in the pervasive computing environments. This unit will equip students with foundation of programming concepts that are common to widely used programming languages. Students will be progressively guided in this introductory unit from necessary and important building blocks of programming to the object-oriented approach. Java, one of the most popular programming languages, is used in this unit. It provides interdisciplinary approaches, applications and examples to support students from broad backgrounds such as science, engineering, and mathematics.

This unit provides a comprehensive introduction to the analysis of complex systems. Key topics are the determination and expression of system requirements (both functional and non-functional), and the representation of structural and behavioural models of the system in UML notations. Students will be expected to evaluate requirements documents and models as well as producing them. This unit covers essential topics from the ACM/IEEE SE2004 curriculum, especially from MAA Software Modelling and Analysis. Note: The lectures of this unit are co-taught with INFO2110.

This unit of study provides a conceptual and practical introduction to the use of common platforms that manage large relational databases. Students will understand the foundations of database management and enhance their theoretical and practical knowledge of the widespread relational database systems, as these are used for both operational (OLTP) and decision-support (OLAP) purposes. The unit covers the main aspects of SQL, the industry-standard database query language. Students will further develop the ability to create robust relational database designs by studying conceptual modelling, relational design and normalization theory. This unit also covers aspects of relational database management systems which are important for database administration. Topics covered include storage structures, indexing and its impact on query plans, transaction management and data warehousing.
In this unit students will develop the ability to: Understand the foundations of database management; Strengthen their theoretical knowledge of database systems in general and relational data model and systems in particular; Create robust relational database designs; Understand the theory and applications of relational query processing and optimisation; Study the critical issues in data and database administration; Explore the key emerging topics in database management.
Note that the first two thirds of the lectures of this foundational unit will be co-taught with the corresponding undergraduate class in semester 1 (INFO2120); tutorials and assignments will be organised separately.

The unit covers general foundations of communication systems and a detailed walk through of the implementation of the TCP/IP protocol stack, which forms the basis of the Internet. The unit also covers the basic knowledge of how to analyse, design and implement simple communication protocols.
On completion of this unit students will have developed an understanding of the principles and practice of the layered model of communications architecture, the TCP/IP protocol stack and its component protocols, and various common techniques and tools for protocol analysis and design.

This unit introduces essential object-oriented design methods and language mechanisms, especially the principles of modelling through Rational Unified Process and agile processes using Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Java or C++, both of which are industry standard. Students work in small groups to experience the process of object-oriented analysis, object-oriented design, implementation and testing by building a real-world application. Java or C++ is used as the implementation language and a special emphasis is placed on those features of Java or C++ that are important for solving real-world problems. Advanced software engineering features, including exceptions and name spaces are thoroughly covered.

Digital media has become indispensable our heterogeneous computing and communication environment. This unit provides an overview of creating, processing, manipulating, and compressing digital media which mainly include image, audio and video. It introduces principles and current techniques such as multimedia data acquisition, analysis, processing and compression and management. It also elaborates different multimedia coding standards, various multimedia systems and cutting-edge multimedia applications such as web media.

This unit of study provides an introduction to computer organisation and network protocols. It covers a broad range of topics including computer hardware, software architecture (operating systems, compilers, etc), and principles of communication network protocols. It is designed to give students an understanding of how software programs operate and run inside the computer hardware, and therefore the knowledge how to use computers most effectively.

This is an elective for students in the postgraduate IT degrees. It is expected to be taken early in the degree if (and only if) their undergraduate education and subsequent experience have not covered this vital aspect, namely working in groups under a defined process to deliver a software development project. Remark: the Sydney University undergraduate degrees in IT and in SE all cover this material, especially through the unit COMP3615 or INFO3600 and INFO3402; however, not all institutions guarantee this sort of experience for IT graduates. This unit will scaffold such students to do well in future group development projects, in their coursework or in industry, by providing fundamental knowledge of Software Engineering processes and practices.
Much of the student's effort will be directed towards a carefully managed small-group project to deliver a software system to meet a client's needs; they will be working with a client who may be external, or who may be a member of the teaching staff role-playing as an external client. A member of the teaching staff (separate from anyone who is acting as client) will take the role of manager for the group, checking progress and providing feedback frequently. By the end of the unit, the students will understand the processes and practices used in group projects that develop software, and they will be able to follow these processes and practices, so that they can contribute effectively in a small group that is developing software to meet clients needs.

In many areas of computer science - robotics, computer graphics, virtual reality, and geographic information systems are some examples - it is necessary to store, analyse, and create or manipulate spatial data. This course deals with the algorithmic aspects of these tasks: we study techniques and concepts needed for the design and analysis of geometric algorithms and data structures. Each technique and concept will be illustrated on the basis of a problem arising in one of the application areas mentioned above.

This unit introduces computational linguistics and the statistical techniques and algorithms used to automatically process natural languages (such as English or Chinese). It will review the core statistics and information theory, and the basic linguistics, required to understand statistical natural language processing (NLP).Statistical NLP is used in a wide range of applications, including information retrieval and extraction; question answer; machine translation; and classifying and clustering of documents. This unit will explore state of the art approaches to the key NLP sub-tasks, including tokenisation, morphological analysis, word sense disambiguation, part-of-speech tagging, named entity recognition, text categorisation, phrase structure and Combinatory Categorial Grammar parsing.Students will implement many of these sub-tasks in labs and assignments. The unit will also investigate the annotation process that is central to creating training data for statistical NLP systems. Students will annotate data as part of completing a real-world NLP task.

This is an advanced course on Pervasive Computing, with a focus on the "Internet of Things" (IoT). It introduces the key aspects of the IoT and explores these in terms of the new research towards creating user interfaces that disappear into the environment and are available pervasively, for example in homes, workplaces, cars and carried.

Visual Analytics aims to facilitate the data analytics process through Information Visualisation. Information Visualisation aims to make good pictures of abstract information, such as stock prices, family trees, and software design diagrams. Well designed pictures can convey this information rapidly and effectively.
The challenge for Visual Analytics is to design and implement effective Visualisation methods that produce pictorial representation of complex data so that data analysts from various fields (bioinformatics, social network, software visualisation and network) can visually inspect complex data and carry out critical decision making.
This unit will provide basic HCI concepts, visualisation techniques and fundamental algorithms to achieve good visualisation of abstract information. Further, it will also provide opportunities for academic research and developing new methods for Visual Analytic methods.

Mobile computing is becoming a main stream for many IT applications, due to the availability of more and more powerful and affordable mobile devices with rich sensors such as cameras and GPS, which have already significantly changed many aspects in business, education, social network, health care, and entertainment in our daily life. Therefore it has been critical for students to be equipped with sufficient knowledge of such new computing platform and necessary skills. The unit aims to provide an in-depth overview of existing and emerging mobile computing techniques and applications, the eco-system of the mobile computing platforms, and its key building components. The unit will also train students with hand-on experiences in developing mobile applications in a broad range of areas.

The growing connected-ness of modern society translates into simplifying global communication and accelerating spread of news, information and epidemics. The focus of this unit is on the key concepts to address the challenges induced by the recent scale shift of complex networks. In particular, the course will present how scalable solutions exploiting graph theory, sociology and probability tackle the problems of communicating (routing, diffusing, aggregating) in dynamic and social networks.

Machine learning is the process of automatically building mathematical models that explain and generalise datasets. It integrates elements of statistics and algorithm development into the same discipline. Data mining is a discipline within knowledge discovery that seeks to facilitate the exploration and analysis of large quantities for data, by automatic and semiautomatic means. This subject provides a practical and technical introduction to machine learning and data mining.
Topics to be covered include problems of discovering patterns in the data, classification, regression, feature extraction and data visualisation. Also covered are analysis, comparison and usage of various types of machine learning techniques and statistical techniques.

This unit of study gives a comprehensive overview of post-relational data models and of latest developments in data storage technology.
Particular emphasis is put on spatial, temporal, and NoSQL data storage. This unit extensively covers the advanced features of SQL:2003, as well as a few dominant NoSQL storage technologies. Besides in lectures, the advanced topics will be also studied with prescribed readings of database research publications.

Nowadays most client facing enterprise applications are running on web or at least with a web interface. The design and implementation of a web application require totally different set of skills to those are required for traditional desktop applications. All web applications are of client/ server architecture. Requests sent to a web application are expected to go through the public Internet, which slows the responsiveness and increases the possible security threat. A typical web application is also expected to handle large number of requests coming from every corner of the Internet and sent by all sorts of client systems. This further complicates the design of such system.
This course aims at providing both conceptual understanding and hand-on experiences for the technologies used in building web applications. We will examine how data/messages are communicated between client and server; how to improve the responsiveness using rich client technology; as well as how to build a secure web application.
At the end of this course, students are expected to have a clear understanding of the structure and technologies of web applications. Students are also expected to have practical knowledge of some major web application environments and to be able to develop and deploy simple web applications. Cloud based platform are increasingly popular as the development and deployment platform. This course will incorporate the cloud aspect of web application development as well.

This unit covers topics on software architecture for large-scale enterprises. Computer systems for large-scale enterprises handle critical business processes, interact with computer systems of other organisations, and have to be highly reliable, available and scalable. This class of systems are built up from several application components, incorporating existing "legacy" code and data stores as well as linking these through middleware technologies, such as distributed transaction processing, remote objects, message-queuing, publish-subscribe, and clustering. The choice of middleware can decide whether the system achieves essential non- functional requirements such as performance and availability. The objective of this unit of study is to educate students for their later professional career and it covers Software Architecture topics of the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering curriculum. Objective: The objective of this unit of study is to educate students for their later professional career and it covers topics of the ACM/IEEE Software Engineering curriculum.

This unit covers topics of active and cutting-edge research within IT in the area of 'Cloud Computing'.
Cloud Computing is an emerging paradigm of utilising large-scale computing services over the Internet that will affect individual and organization's computing needs from small to large. Over the last decade, many cloud computing platforms have been set up by companies like Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, Microsoft, Salesforce, Ebay and Facebook. Some of the platforms are open to public via various pricing models. They operate at different levels and enable business to harness different computing power from the cloud.
In this course, we will describe the important enabling technologies of cloud computing, explore the state-of-the art platforms and the existing services, and examine the challenges and opportunities of adopting cloud computing. The course will be organized as a series of presentations and discussions of seminal and timely research papers and articles. Students are expected to read all papers, to lead discussions on some of the papers and to complete a hands-on cloud-programming project.

Digital media data such as audio, image, videos, graphics, and 3D are increasingly becoming indispensable for big data driven computing applications in many domains, such as social media, public security, education, commerce, entertainment, and healthcare. This unit aims to bring students the essential knowledge on digital media, various computing techniques and tools on digital media processing and analysis, and many cutting-edge digital media applications such as VR/AR and Internet of Things (IoT) enabled new media. It will help students build practical computing skills for digital media driven applications and utilise learned knowledge to produce creative and media rich solutions to real world problems.

This unit provides principles and practicalities of creating interactive and effective multimedia products. It gives an overview of the complete spectrum of different media platforms and current authoring techniques used in multimedia production. Coverage includes the following key topics: enabling multimedia technologies; multimedia design issues; interactive 2D and 3D computer animation; multimedia object modelling and rendering; multimedia scripting programming; post-production and delivery of multimedia applications.

The unit introduces networking concepts beyond the best effort service of the core TCP/IP protocol suite. Understanding of the fundamental issues in building an integrated multi-service network for global Internet services, taking into account service objectives, application characteristics and needs and network mechanisms will be discussed. Enables students to understand the core issues and be aware of proposed solutions so they can actively follow and participate in the development of the Internet beyond the basic bit transport service.

Information technology (IT) has significantly contributed to the research and practice of medicine, biology and health care. The IT field is growing enormously in scope with biomedicine taking a lead role in utilising the evolving applications to its best advantage. The goal of this unit of study is to provide students with the necessary knowledge to understand the information technology in biomedicine. The major emphasis will be on the principles associated with biomedical digital imaging systems and related biomedicine data processing, analysis, visualisation, registration, modelling, retrieval and management. A broad range of practical integrated clinical applications will be also elaborated.

The explosive growth of multimedia data, including text, audio, images and video has imposed unprecedented challenges for search engines to meet various information needs of users. This unit provides students with the necessary and updated knowledge of this field in the context of big data, from the information retrieval basics of a search engine, to many advanced techniques towards next generation search engines, such as content based image and video retrieval, large scale visual information retrieval, and social media.

This unit is intended to introduce and motivate the study of high performance computer systems. The student will be presented with the foundational concepts pertaining to the different types and classes of high performance computers. The student will be exposed to the description of the technological context of current high performance computer systems. Students will gain skills in evaluating, experimenting with, and optimising the performance of high performance computers. The unit also provides students with the ability to undertake more advanced topics and courses on high performance computing.

Usability engineering is the systematic process of designing and evaluating user interfaces so that they are usable. This means that people can readily learn to use them efficiently, can later remember how to use them and find it pleasant to use them. The wide use of computers in many aspects of people's lives means that usability engineering is of the utmost importance.
There is a substantial body of knowledge about how to elicit usability requirements, identify the tasks that a system needs to support, design interfaces and then evaluate them. This makes for systematic ways to go about the creation and evaluation of interfaces to be usable for the target users, where this may include people with special needs. The field is extremely dynamic with the fast emergence of new ways to interact, ranging from conventional WIMP interfaces, to touch and gesture interaction, and involving mobile, portable, embedded and desktop computers.
This unit will enable students to learn the fundamental concepts, methods and techniques of usability engineering. Students will practice these in small classroom activities. They will then draw them together to complete a major usability evaluation assignment in which they will design the usability testing process, recruit participants, conduct the evaluation study, analyse these and report the results.

This unit brings together a wide range of skills that are routinely practised in bioinformatics, from the 'hard' subjects of mathematics, statistics and computer science, to the 'soft' subjects in the biological / health sciences and pharmacology. The unit covers the essentials of bioinformatics data gathering, manipulation, mining and storage that underpin bioinformatics research. It further provides additional practice in the graduate attributes of Research and Inquiry, Information Literacy and Communication through analysis of scientific research, use of large bioinformatics data sets, and writing of reports.

This unit will present the lessons from recent research and from case studies of practice to bring students the skills to assess and improve the security of deployed systems. A particular focus is on data-driven approaches to collect operational data about a system's security. We explore deployment issues at local and global scale, e.g. for X.509, DNS, and BGP, and also take human factors explicitly into account. As a result, students will learn to put building blocks of security together in a sound way, to arrive at engineering solutions that are empirically verifiable, functional, and secure against realistic threats. As Dan Geer once famously said: "Any security technology whose effectiveness can't be empirically determined is indistinguishable from blind luck."

Digital technologies permeate every part of our lives. The internet has created a more open society, allowing us to create, share and access information and knowledge freely. As more of the services we rely on are digitised and available to use over the web, the more our identity, productivity, access to information, connectivity, social connections and financial well-being depends on information security. Consequently, a deep understanding of both offensive and defensive security techniques is fast becoming essential knowledge for a career in computing.
This course will provide in-depth knowledge of offensive security that will prepare the student for work in any technical field where they will are responsible for the development or maintenance of sensitive systems. The course begins by introducing the basic tools used by hackers, before highlighting the common weaknesses- and mitigations- for various levels of the technology stack, such as web applications, operating systems and corporate networks. Finally, students are provided practical insights into careers in information security in the areas of attack detection, prevention and defence. Students will develop the skills necessary to both gain access to test computers and to defend test networks from attack.

The frontier for using data to make decisions has shifted dramatically. High performing enterprises are now building their competitive strategies around data-driven insights that in turn generate impressive business results. This course provides an overview of Business Intelligence (BI) concepts, technologies and practices, and then focuses on the application of BI through a team based project simulation that will allow students to have practical experience in building a BI solution based on a real world case study.

Healthcare systems intimately coupled to ICT have been at the forefront of many of the medical advances in modern society in the past decade. As is already the case in many other service-driven sectors, it is widely recognised that a key approach to solve some of the healthcare challenges is to harness and further ICT innovations. This unit is designed to help fill a massive technology talent gap where one of the biggest IT challenges in history is in the technology transformation of healthcare.
The unit will consist of weekly lectures, a set of group discussions (tutorials) and practical lab sessions. The contents will offer students the opportunity to develop IT knowledge and skills related to all aspects of Enterprise Healthcare Information Systems.
Key Topics covered include: Health Information System e.g., Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) and Radiology IS; Electronic Health Records / Personal Health Records; Health data management; Healthcare Transactions; Health Statistics and Research; Decision Support Systems including Image-based systems; Cost Assessments and Ethics / Privacy; TeleHealth / eHealth; Cases studies with Australian Hospitals.
Guest lecturers from the healthcare industry will be invited. The core of student's assessments will be based on individual research reports (topics related to the current industry IT needs), software / practical assignment and quizzes.

This unit will provide a comprehensive introduction to the field of information systems from organisational and managerial perspectives. The emergence of the digital firm and its implications will be studied. The critical role of information and knowledge management will be emphasised from both conceptual and practical standpoints.
Key topics covered will include: Basic Information Systems Concepts; Systems Approach and Systems Thinking; E-Business and E-Commerce; IT Strategy and Competitive Advantage; Data and Knowledge Management; Information Systems Development and IS Management; Decision support systems, business intelligence and online analytical processing systems (OLAP); Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Enterprise Content Management and Supply Chain Management (SCM) systems; Ethical, Legal and Social Aspects of Information technologies.

This unit of study gives a broad view of the management aspects of information security. We emphasise corporate governance for information security, organisational structures within which information security is managed, risk assessment, and control structures. Planning for security, and regulatory issues, are also addressed.

The service economy plays a dominant and growing role in growth and employment in most parts of the world. Increasingly, the improved productivity and competitive performance of firms and nations in the services arena relies on innovative and effective design, engineering and management of IT-centric services. In response to industry needs, this unit offers IT professionals a social, economic and technical perspective of service-oriented IT.
In this unit we investigate:
- Service fundamentals: context and strategy (the service economy and the nature of service systems; IT-centric services in a social, economic and business context; IT-centric services: optimisation and innovation).
- Modelling, Designing and Engineering IT-centric services (business process modelling and management; service oriented architecture).
- Sourcing, governing and managing IT-centric services (outsourcing IT-centric services; services in the cloud; IT-centric services governance and management frameworks (COBIT, ITIL and eSCM); service level agreements).
This unit involves reading business and academic articles and writing a consultant's report. Students need to be able to read, critically analyse, and report on an article or case study every three weeks. If you are not confident of your skills in these areas, you can enrol in the free courses provided by the University's Learning Centre in Academic Reading and Writing and Oral Communication Skills. Some of these courses are specifically designed for students with a non-English speaking background. Familiarity with using Library reference tools and the ability to locate scholarly resources in the Library's electronic databases is also necessary. See the Library's Research and information skills page for help with this http://www.library.usyd.edu.au/skills/

An essential skill for an IT manager is the ability to keep up-to-date with emerging technologies, and be able to evaluate the significance of these technologies to their organisation's business activities. This unit of study is based around a study of current technologies and the influence of these technologies on business strategies.
Important trends in innovation in IT are identified and their implications for innovation management explored. Major topics include: drivers of innovation; the trend to open information ("open source") rather than protected intellectual property; and distribution of innovation over many independent but collaborating actors.
On completion of this unit, students will be able to identify and analyse an emerging technology and write a detailed evaluation of the impact of this technology on existing business practices.

This unit of study covers the key components of successfully managing a wide variety of Information Technology projects. The course covers both quantitative and qualitative aspects of project management. Topics include the management of time, scope, budget, risk, quality, and resources through each of the phases of a project.

This unit will explore the limitations of IT project management and the most promising techniques to overcome project failure. It will start by reviewing case study research showing we have reached the limits of traditional IT project management practice. The theoretical base will be completed by exploring the finding that senior management have more impact on success than traditional approaches.
Participants will be introduced to and learn to apply the most promising tools and techniques needed to govern IT projects. The topics reviewed will include: 1) Strategy; 2) Organisational change; 3) Project sponsorship; 4) Programme management; 5) Performance measurement; 6) Culture; 7) Portfolio management; 8) Relevant Australian and International Standards on IT/Project Governance and new industry methodologies around portfolio, programme and change management will be reviewed.

The increasingly strategic role of IT in organisations is widely recognised. This unit of study is designed to provide a comprehensive introduction to strategic aspects of IT as they impact on business value. Such a perspective is critical for IT professionals in both IT producer and user organisations from the level of Chief Information Officer to managers as well as technical specialists. Deep understanding of IT strategy formulation and implementation and ensuring its alignment with the organisation's strategic directions is important for successfully managing the major changes that the IT function has undergone in recent years.
Topics covered will include assessment of IT impacts, achieving sustainable competitive advtantage through IT, relationship between IT strategy and value, IT strategy formulation and implementation, evaluation of strategic investments in IT, IT portfolio management, IT sourcing and open innovation, and dynamics of IT strategy and game theory. It will explore IT-related strategic decision making at the different organisational levels and the concept of strategic congruence. This unit will also provide students with models, tools, and techniques to evaluate an organisation's IT strategic position, and hence to help make appropriate strategic choices.

The need to track and facilitate the sharing of the core knowledge resources in contemporary organisations is widely recognised. This course will provide a comprehensive introduction to the area of Knowledge Management (KM) from both technological and organisational perspectives. We will review and discuss a range of published papers, case studies, and other publications that deal with a range of important KM-related topics. One of the key knowledge management technologies, Business Intelligence Systems, will be covered in detail. It will also include hands-on work using the BI (Online Analytical Processing- OLAP) tool, COGNOS.
Some of the main themes to be covered will include: KM- Conceptual Foundations; Taxonomies of organizational knowledge and KM mechanisms; Case/Field Studies of KM Initiatives; Data Warehousing and OLAP/Business Analytics; Data, text, and web mining; Social media,crowdsourcing, and KM; Big data and actionable knowledge.

This unit of study presents the leading edge of research and practice in change management and focuses on theories, frameworks and perspectives that can guide your work as a change agent in the IT industries. The unit will cover a range of approaches, methods, interventions and tools that can be used to successfully manage change projects that relate to the implementation of new technologies.
The globalisation of markets and industries, accelerating technological innovations and the need of companies to remain at the forefront of technological developments in an increasingly competitive, globalised industry have resulted in a significant increase in the speed, magnitude, and unpredictability of technological and organisational change over the last decades. Companies who have the competencies required to navigate change and overcome the inevitable obstacles to success gain a much-needed competitive edge in the marketplace. Increased globalisation, economic rationalism, environmental dynamics and technological changes mean that companies, more than ever before, need to be highly flexible and adaptable to survive and thrive. Yet, a large percentage of IT projects fail to achieve the intended objectives, go over time or over budget. The capability to successfully manage organisational and technological change has become a core competency for IT professionals, business leaders and project managers.
This unit has been specifically developed for IT professionals, project managers, and senior managers to equip them with the knowledge and tools needed to ensure that IT projects remain on track to achieving the intended objectives on time and on budget. The course presents the key theories, concepts and findings in the context of academic research and change management practice. The objective is to allow participants to critically assess academic theories and methodological practice and devise interventions and actions that allow the successful management of IT initiatives.