Software Engineering for Software as a Service is a free online no-credit course offered on the Internet by UC Berkeley’s Armando Fox and David Patterson.

The course “teaches the engineering fundamentals for long-lived software using the highly-productive Agile development method for Software as a Service (SaaS) using Ruby on Rails” in 5 weeks starting February 20, 2012. As of today there are over 40,000 registered students for this course worldwide.

While the course is free, the recommended textbook Engineering Long-Lasting Software: An Agile Approach Using SaaS and Cloud Computing, Alpha Edition by Armando Fox and David Patterson is not. The NCSU Libraries is buying one copy of this text and putting it in the D. H. Hill Library Textbook Collection. NCSU Libraries also has a copy of the book on a Kindle in its eBook Lending Program that can be checked out for one week. If you are at NCSU and want to sign up for the course, you will be able to check out the text for one 2-hour loan at a time like any other textbook.

This is the first time the NCSU Libraries is using the Textbook Collection for a course not taught at NC State. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please contact Orion Pozo, Collection Manager for Engineering and Computer Science.