⚙️ AI Engineering Week 1 of 14 BSc · Y2 ⏱ ~50 min

Week 1: REST API Principles, gRPC & Service Architecture

Design scalable APIs and microservice architectures: REST principles, gRPC, service mesh patterns, API gateways, and inter-service communication.

University of Aliens

SE201 — Lecture 1 · BSc Y2

🎬 CC Licensed Lecture

0:00 / —:—— 📺 Creative Commons Licensed

🎯 Learning Objectives

Design REST APIs following OpenAPI spec and best practices
Implement gRPC services with Protocol Buffers
Build microservices with proper service discovery and load balancing
Use API gateways and implement authentication/rate limiting

Topics Covered This Lecture

REST API Design: Resources, Methods, Status Codes

gRPC & Protocol Buffers

Service Discovery & Load Balancing

API Gateway: Auth, Rate Limiting, CORS

📖 Lecture Overview

This first lecture establishes the foundational framework for API Design & Microservices. By the end of this session, you will have the conceptual grounding and practical starting point needed for the rest of the course.

        Why this matters
        Design scalable APIs and microservice architectures: REST principles, gRPC, service mesh patterns, API gateways, and inter-service communication. This lecture sets up everything that follows — make sure you understand the core concepts before proceeding to Week 2.
      

Key Concepts

The lecture introduces the four main pillars of this course: REST API Design: Resources, Methods, Status Codes, gRPC & Protocol Buffers, Service Discovery & Load Balancing, API Gateway: Auth, Rate Limiting, CORS. Each will be explored in depth over the 14-week curriculum, with hands-on projects reinforcing theory at every stage.

# Quick Start: verify your environment is ready for SE201
import sys
print(f"Python {sys.version}")

# Check key libraries are installed
try:
    import numpy, pandas, matplotlib
    print("✅ Core libraries ready")
except ImportError as e:
    print(f"❌ Missing: {e} — run: pip install numpy pandas matplotlib")

This Week's Focus

Focus on mastering: REST API Design: Resources, Methods, Status Codes and gRPC & Protocol Buffers. These are the prerequisites for everything in Week 2. The concepts build on each other — do not skip the practice exercises.

📋 Project 1 of 3 50% of Final Grade

SE201 Project 1: Microservices ML Application

Build a 3-service ML application: a preprocessing service, an inference service, and an API gateway. Implement with FastAPI, containerize with Docker Compose, and add authentication.

3 FastAPI microservices with OpenAPI docs
gRPC inter-service communication
API gateway with JWT authentication and rate limiting
Load test: 500 RPS with <100ms p99 latency

50%

3 Projects

20%

Midterm Exam

30%

Final Exam

📝 Sample Exam Questions

These represent the style and difficulty of questions you'll see on the midterm and final. Start thinking about them now.

Conceptual Short Answer

Explain REST constraints (statelessness, uniform interface, layered system). Why does each matter?

Analysis Short Answer

What are the advantages of gRPC over REST for internal microservice communication?

Applied Code / Proof

Design the URL structure and HTTP methods for a CRUD API managing ML model versions.