Course Description:
This course provides the fundamental concepts underpinning blockchain technologies. This course focuses on blockchain applications for business. Students will learn about the overall blockchain landscape—the investments, the size of markets, major players and the global reach—as well as the potential business value of blockchain applications and the challenges that must be overcome to achieve that value. Students will learn enough about the underlying technologies to be well-prepared to develop blockchain applications in future courses.

Prerequisites: (WCOB 2023 or ISYS 2103) and (ACCT 2013 with a grade of C or better) or CSCE 2004 each with a grade of C or better.

Goals of Course:

• Understand the history of blockchains (BC)
• Understand the global BC landscape—size of market; major consortia; major players; major consultants; investors; geographies
• Understand the different components of a BC application: Consensus protocols, distributed ledgers, digital assets, smart contracts, cryptography (understand pros and cons of choices for each component)
• Understand the strengths and weakness of different types of blockchains—permissioned vs. permissionless; public vs. private
• Identify the potential business value of BCs in general
• Understand the criteria for ideal use cases (BCs vs. traditional distributed databases)
• Business understanding of various protocols & platforms (e.g., Hyperledger, Quorum, Ethereum, Bitcoin)
• Identify major technical challenges and emerging solutions
• Identify major business challenges and emerging solutions

The focus of this course is to expose students to working with mainframe computer systems, large-scale data, and blockchain software & technologies. This course provides the opportunity for students to gain valuable insight into mainframe coding concepts, SQL, and data in a mainframe operating environment.

Pre- or Corequisite: ISYS 4173

Accurately capturing and storing business transactions is an important processing function in many businesses. This course provides students with the necessary understanding and skills to develop blockchain and other large-scale data applications in a mainframe environment with high volume.

Prerequisite: ISYS 4453 with a grade of “C” or better

Course Description:
This course provides the fundamental concepts underpinning blockchain technologies. This course focuses on blockchain applications for business. Students will learn about the overall blockchain landscape—the investments, the size of markets, major players and the global reach—as well as the potential business value of blockchain applications and the challenges that must be overcome to achieve that value. Students will learn enough about the underlying technologies to be well-prepared to develop blockchain applications in future courses.

Goals of Course:

• Understand the history of blockchains (BC)
• Understand the global BC landscape—size of market; major consortia; major players; major consultants; investors; geographies
• Understand the different components of a BC application: Consensus protocols, distributed ledgers, digital assets, smart contracts, cryptography (understand pros and cons of choices for each component)
• Understand the strengths and weakness of different types of blockchains—permissioned vs. permissionless; public vs. private
• Identify the potential business value of BCs in general
• Understand the criteria for ideal use cases (BCs vs. traditional distributed databases)
• Business understanding of various protocols & platforms (e.g., Hyperledger, Quorum, Ethereum, Bitcoin)
• Identify major technical challenges and emerging solutions
• Identify major business challenges and emerging solutions

This course is designed for you to learn about the basic architecture of both traditional enterprise data management and services as well as the emergence of distributed data architectures such as blockchain data structures and distributed applications. This course will focus on setting the foundation for your understanding of enterprise-level systems, the various stack of technologies needed for larger enterprise-level applications, and the managerial decisions needed when determining the business value and strategy for initiating proof-of-concepts, especially in the context of blockchain technologies. This course will focus on exploring and developing enterprise-level proof-of-concepts to be used for data integration, reporting, transactions, hosting, and web services to allow integration of various data sources into a larger, organizational IT architecture.

Throughout the course students will gain hands-on experience working with enterprise levels systems including IBM’s z14 mainframe, various Linux distributions, Hyperledger Fabric blockchain, and various database management systems (e.g., SQL Server, MySQL). Lectures, videos, and practical exercises will be provided to guide students through the development of applications integrating various data sources, the development and management of blockchain technologies, and the system architectures and business processes needed to service these proof-of-concepts.

Following initiatives at the University of Arkansas, this course will provide a deeper look and development of blockchain technologies. Blockchain technologies are the distributed ledger technology that serves as the foundational architecture underlying cryptocurrencies (e.g. Bitcoin, Ether, LiteCoin, etc.) as well as distributed applications and databases. While blockchain technologies are seeing accelerated adoption and interest in the current market, the underlying technology and use-cases that provide value to organizations have come to the forefront of industry questions. This course will provide a managerial view focusing on helping organizations determine the scenarios under which blockchain technologies can (and should) fit into the organizational IT architecture to provide increased benefits.

The focus of this course is to expose students to working with distributed and service oriented architectures for different applications as well as the IT infrastructure needed. The course provides the opportunity for students to gain valuable insight into blockchain as a distributed system and cloud architecture platforms with the goal of developing enterprise applications.

Prerequisite: ISYS 5133

Prerequisite: Junior or Senior Level Course