CS 542 - Guidelines for Course Project Proposal

Due Dates and Deliverables:

The project proposal is due in hardcopy at the start of class, on Thursday, Oct 11th, 2007. As a guideline, it typically is around 5 pages or so in length. However there is no strict minimum or maximum page limit, simply focus on providing a clear description of your intended project work.

Proposal Content:

Each group will turn in a typed proposal defining the finalized project goals for the CS542 course project. Include your new knowledge found from having dug into the proposed environment and software tools to fully understand the feasibility of your proposal, the amount and type of work involved, as well as the background material and required readings needed to be able to succeed in your project. This proposal should clearly explain the proposed work to be done, and also list the relevant environmental setup (tools) you are now familiar with in order to succeed to complete the project. Note: This will count for 10% of your project score (focus is

This proposal should include at a minimum:

• explain the proposed work to be done.
  This should include for example for an application project the domain requirements of data to be modeled, queries to be supported, and interfaces to be provided, while for a research project, it may include the types of experiments you expect to conduct at the end of your research to valid your ideas. If not obvious, please make sure to justify clearly why your proposed project can be considered a 'database project'.
• project architecture planned to be used;
• list the relevant environmental setup (tools) you are now familiar with, and on what platforms you have tried them out so that you can be assured of the success of your proposed project,
• collect a listing of expected background material you plan to learn about, such as a list of related literature papers for a research paper or a list of manuals and URLs of tutorials for an application project,
• provide a clear plan for completion, including a list of tasks to be undertaken week by week and a clear task distribution as to which team member will be responsible for which portion of the project and when, and
• the shared deliverables for the end of the course.

Grading:

This proposal will be graded. The score will count for 10% of your overall project score.

The grading will primarily be based on the clarity of your project proposal in terms of the deliverables described above. The clarity of the project definition, a well defined scope of the project, and preliminary feasibility assessment will be checked. Overall, your understanding of the project and its anticipated scope will be checked for. In some cases, the later may be gleemed from a meeting with the instructor instead of just your submitted written document.

The readability and professional quality of your document will also be taken into account.