CS 561 - Course Project Information

General Guidelines

This course includes a class project. The intent is for students to select from a wide spectrum of possible projects depending on your interests and skills. You are highly encouraged to take on a project in a technology or topic that are not yet too familiar with so that you assure you learn something new. An application project, similar to what you would be doing in a beginning database course such as CS542, is not acceptable.

You should preferably work in groups of two students. However, one person projects are also acceptable, if necessary. You need to have your project plans and project partners or lack thereafter cleared with the instructor before submitting your project proposal on March 11, 2004. You can advertise your project idea to the cs561@cs mailing group to try and identify an interested partner.

Project Types

Some of the general directions/projects acceptable for the course are:

• The design, implementation and evaluation of a database management application for a real customer, e.g., some organization on campus or even a real company that you identify. Projects of this type are discouraged. This type of application-project is only permitted (1) if you have very limited hands-on database exposure and (2) if you are making sure to utilize highly novel tools into your project that you have not previously used before, i.e., you must assure you are learning something new. Examples include auctions, online-colloaborative-reviewing-system, e-commerce applications, and office automation.

• Software development of a particular subcomponent or software tool of a DBMS system. This could be a solid (re) implementation of some existing database software. For example, you could build a buffer manager, a distributed query processor, a query optimizer, a query translation model, and so on. This could be done from scatch, or using some available software as starting point, as gotten from as freeware from the internet or from the DSRG lab.

• Development of a prototype of some advanced technology aspects of modern database systems. For example, possible ideas include:
  • information integration tool
  • sql-based wrapper of web site
  • Distributed Data Warehouse Agent
  • Web-based query processor or search engine
  • XML change detection tool
  • Database-centric Web Site Manager
  • XML to Relational Query Mapper
  • XML-information integration of relational databases
  • XML to Relational Update Propagator
  • XML to Relational Query Mapper
  • Web Query Caching
  • Query Caching Manager using Oracle
  • nearest neighbor search engine
  • continous query processor
  • multiple query optimization

• The design, setup and comparative testing of a set of techniques or algorithms against some benchmark program. Such an evaluation should ideally include the implementation (or install) and evaluation of several (more than one) algorithms, structures or tools from the literature. For example, you could run performance studies for different data mining algorithms over web access patterns, or for different XML query processors, or for different data warehouse maintenance algorithms, or performance comparison for XML-management by different commercial DBMS engines, etc.

• The development of either an in-depth survey or possibly a research paper into any one area of database systems. Such a project may be completely paper-based, as long as the final output is a substantial document that includes critical analysis of the literature, comprehensive coverage of the literature, as well as an annotated bibliography. Or, in the case of a research paper, some clear justification for the proposed algorithm or ideas. For example, you could run develop a research paper on a "comparison of query processing strategies for high-dimensional data sets". Based on past experience, these projects tend to be the hardest.

Project Dates and Deliverables.

The project has three stages:

• STAGE 0: Project Formation and Intent (During first weeks of class)

  Each group will discuss with the instructor their ideas about possible projects. They should begin to formulate a clear proposal early on, possibly already written donw. Please discuss your ideas on a project with the instructor before finalizing and submitting your proposal.

• STAGE 1: Project Proposal (Due: March 11 - week 8)

  Each group will turn in a typed proposal (about 2 to 4 pages) defining the finalized project. At this time, you are encouraged to already have dug into the software environment to understand the feasibility of your proposed direction. And, you should have looked at the necessary background literature to acquire knowledge and skills needed to pursue the project. This proposal should clearly explain the proposed work to be done, and also list the relevant environment and tools you have set up in order to succeed to complete the project.

  Note: This will count for 10% credit towards your final project score.

• STAGE 2: Progress Report (Due: April 8 -- week 12)

  This progress report should clearly state the current status of the project. By this time, I would expect you to be already half way towards completing your project. I would expect you to have conducted all necessary background work including establishing a bibliography and reading relevant manuals and literature, installing and testing all necessary software, resolving specific design issues, and refining the project plan or possibly re-directing the effort based on your background studies. Make sure to include literature you have reviewed for the project, all other tasks you have accomplished as well as your basic idea of how you are approaching the problem. You also need to construct a precise schedule and task list week by week; and the deliverables for the end of the course.

  This report must be typed and typically about 10 pages long. Think of the report as being one major step towards your final project report. Hence, do a good job on it now, and you can reuse it as well as starting point for your final report. I may ask some of teams to meet with me to show a demonstration of whatever they have working at this time; so be ready for that.

  Note: This report will carry 20% of your final project score.

  The most important part here will be that you demonstrate that you have completed a sufficient amount of work to be half way through your project, and that there is a clear plan of what will be accomplished by the end of the project. See more guidelines below.

• STAGE 3: Final Project Presentation and Report (Due: possibly April 29 --- week 15)

  The final project presentation and demonstration will be done in class by each team during the last class session. We'll determine the exact time allowed per project once we know how many different projects we have. See below for what aspects should be stressed in this presentation.

  This presentation must be supplemented with a final project report due on that same day. This report should be a well-written technical report describing your project (and put on the web). It is likely that this report will essentially be an extension of your progress report. Depending on the nature of your project, it will need to contain detailed designs, system architectues, key technologies used, experimental charts, sample runs, a detailed analysis of the results, a system design, a justification and evaluation of selected tools, etc. The report typically is between 15 to 20 pages.

  Note: This part of the course project will count towards the remaining 70 % of the project score.

Grading of Project Progress

For the project progress , you can get a maximum of 100pts. The grade of this assignment will be given using the following as guideline:

• the difficulty and size of the project you have chosen to work on, and your overall solution approach [10pts].

• the progress made towards your project thus far (i.e., are you about half-way into the project by now?) [30pts].

• the project report that you turn in to me in hard-copy and in e-copy to link into our course webpage. you can include appendices (such as example runs or whatever), if you want. (is it well organized, clear, and professional quality, complete, and informative?) [50pts.]

• the time plan for the remainder of the project (do you now have set up a clear and realistic plan of what tasks need to be done during the remaining 6 weeks of the project in order to complete it in time by end of semester ?) [10pts].

• the understanding and contribution of each team member of his or her part of the project, as well as of the overall group product. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO APPEND ONE PAGE TO THE END OF YOUR MATERIAL YOU TURN IN THAT STATES THE PERCENTAGE OF CONTRIBUTION FROM EACH TEAM MEMBER INTO THE PROJECT EFFORT THUS FAR. YOU CAN SIMPLY SAY HERE THAT EQUAL EFFORT WAS PUT FORTH, IF YOU WISH, OR YOU CAN LIST THE TASKS DONE BY EACH MEMBER. [no pts, except this may be used to not assign the same score to each of the team members. the default is all get the same score, unless there is some inequality of effort.]

Project Grading (general)

The final grade of the team project (which may not necessarily be the same for each member of the team) will consist of:

• the difficulty of the project you have chosen to work on, and your solution approach,
• the oral project presentation (covering the problem your group tackled, your solution approach, and your results at the end of the course),
• the written documentation of your project in the form of a report (which you will have to enter on the Web to make it accessible to other students in the class),
• the demonstration of your system (such as successful example runs or performance evalution charts), as applicable and
• the understanding of each team member of his or her part of the project, as well as of the overall group product.