List of currently open MQP projects

• Data Integration We explore data integration solutions where XML is used as the data model for integration data from different sources. Our focus at WPI DB research is on query processing and optimization in such a distributed setting, view maintenance etc. People who are interested in this project must have taken DB I and DB II (or equivalent). Good understanding of algorithms, OS are essential and knowledge of distributed systems would help.
• Health Information Technology Our project is based on the premise that Health IT has potential to address several of the issues that we face in health care -- including avoiding medication errors, ensuring access to information etc. There are other department faculty members who are involved in this project, including Mgmt Dept, WPI, and UMass Medical School.
• Miscellaneous Projects of Interest
  Some other miscellaneous projects of interest to me are below.
  • Hidden Web
    Consider a site like amazon.com. It has its data about books, CDs etc hidden behind a form interface. We would like to get to this hidden data. This data can then be indexed, searched and integrated with other data sources.
    The goal of this project is to research and implement techniques for getting to this hidden data, and to develop a software tool that does the same.
  • Database for Environmental Science Researchers - Co-advised with Stanley Selkow, Betsy Colburn (Harvard Forest) -- This project is scheduled to finish in May 2008 -- so not sure if it will be offered next year
    A vernal pond is a body of water which lasts through much of the summer but dries by autumn. Its ecological importance is that fish can not survive in a vernal pond, and a number of animals (including certain frogs and salamanders) lay their eggs and pass their early stages of life only in vernal ponds. Researchers at the US Environmental Protection Agency and others all through the northeast need a centralized data base into which school groups, consultants, regulators, naturalists, and scientists can put data on vernal pools they observe (physical dimensions, hydrologic characteristics, biota, etc). This project will produce an online database which will accumulate the data from many sources.
  • Projects on processing XML streaming data (think RSS feeds).

List of completed MQPs

• XPath to SQL translation
  Consider XML documents stored in relational databases. This project involves efficient translation of XPath queries to SQL queries. Also translate XML updates to SQL updates. This work has been done by several students - Rich Nordin, Jennifer Schweers, Rich Tamalavitch, Rich Omar, Greg Labonte, Aaron McDewitt.
• ER to XML Schema translation
  Consider designing an XML schema for an application. One comes up with an ER schema, and then translates this ER schema to XML schema. This project developed a tool to convert an ER schema to an XML schema. Tool developed by Min Son and Jinho Kang.
• SAX-Lite
  SAX-Lite is part of our research, where we build a light version of SAX parser especially useful for XML stream processing. The SAX-Lite parser will not be a conformant SAX parser (it will not even check whether the XML document is well-formed). In stead, it will be a simple lexical analyzer that takes in a stream and emits SAX tokens such as begin element, end element, text etc. As part of this project, you will need to implement SAX-Lite, and compare the performance against other ideas used for boosting XML streaming performance such as SIX (Stream Index) from University of Washington. Completed by Nikhil Sreenath in Spring 2007.
• co-advised ebay data mining project; location-based grocery shopping recommender system