CS542 Course Project Samples : To Get You Going.

• Database Application Project:

  In a typical practical case, students complete a project which would include the design, development and implementation of a database application. You do some work on the project each week, beginning with selecting your application environment, collecting requirements and designing the database schema, obtaining and loading your data into a commercial database system, and finally writing a number of SQL queries, programs with embedded SQL queries, and exercising other features of SQL, such as possible triggers or constraints.

  Possible extensions to such an application project may include the development of a graphical user interface, web-based front end, or some client-server architecture. The tuning of the underlying system with some query optimization strategies for improved performance will also be desirable.

  Choices of technology to consider include what backend database server to work with, such as Oracle8i, MS Sequel Server, or MySQL, what platform and programming language to work with, as well as what front-end tool to use for GUI development. You may want to try out java, JDBC connections to DBMS, and servlets, or java server pages and so on. The SUN web site is a good place to get started with exploring possible technologies to try out.

  Possibilities for applications are infinite, and up to your imagination. Some examples include:

  • a store front where multiple business offer a uniform forms-based interface to shop online.
  • a collaborative refereeing system for remote judges to rank submitted entries,
  • course scheduler for students to register, make yearly schedules, and find time clashes.
  • on-line auctions for the sale of vacations or cars,
  • on-line book stores such as Amazon.com,
  • database for job search and job-to-skill matching,
  • wedding registry for bridal gifts,
  • molecular database for biotech firms,
  • office automation,
  • and so on.

• Database System Project:

  A second type of project may be concerned with developing one particular module of a typical database system, or to develop some enhanced tool for data management. Such a project will help with gaining a better understanding of the functioning and internals of a DBMS engine.

  Examples of such a DBMS system module may be:

  • file manager and index manager,
  • query processor,
  • concurrency controller,
  • query processor,
  • index structures,
  • buffer manager,
  • database design tool: Given an ER or say a UML diagram, this tool will generate a relational database design in the form of an SQL table generation script; and possibly perform database normalization of the generated tables.
  • DBMS index selection tool: Given an SQL workload over a schema, this tool will generate a set of suggested indices for performance optimization.
  • DBMS query plan analyzer: Given an SQL query, this tool will display the underlying algebra query plan generated by the DBMS engine along with some explanation of it. Your tool could be as fancy as generating a dynamic graphical display as the data is being processed and passed from node to node of the tree (assuming we can get access to that part of the DBMS engine, say from freeware software like mysql.) IBM DB2 has nice tools of this kind for query analysis and optimziation purposes, IBM tools can be gotten for free from IBM for educational purposes.

  You may be able to make use of the Minibase software downloadable at the same site as the main course text book for some code to get you started with for example a simple query optimizer.

  Or, you could look at the website of the previous offerings of the advanced undergraduate database course at WPI, namely, http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~cs4432/d01. There you will find a step by step course project to design a B-tree index structure and then to utilize this index structure for SQL-like query processing over several data files. This course web page also contains a simple project on concurrency control via object locking, that could easily be extended into a more powerful transaction processing strategy. This or variations of such a project would be a very informative project to give you a sense about some of the internals of a DBMS.

• Database Research Project:

  The third type of project would be a more researchy effort that either implements a portion of some on-going research project here at WPI or elsewhere, that implements ideas described in some paper in the recent literature, or that pursue some research ideas of your own. Examples of such type of projects range widely. Just pick up the database literature and browse for a few of the cool data management topics, such as :

  • develop some monitoring application using sensor database technology, such as TinyDB.
  • work with some data mining algorithsm and revamp them to be applicable for continuous stream monitoring, aim to try your project out on some real data set.
  • design an event pattern detection engine that support scalable detection of anomolies in an event stream, say a business workflow stream.
  • explore state-of-the-art database stream query engine technology by working with the StreamBase or Code9 software, developing some sample applications or even comparing their features and performances.
  • implement a distributed data warehouse load tool that can handle high-performance ETL processing.
  • work with XQUERY engines, such as possibly IBM's XML extensions to design web applications with database support.
  • design a visual analytics system that allows users to visually explore multi-dimensional data sets, like stock market data or medical data records, for trends and patterns.

  You may find some on-going projects in the WPI DSRG research lab listed on the DSRG webpage at http://davis.wpi.edu/dsrg.