CS 4604: Project Assignment 1

Assigned on August 28, 2008. Hardcopy due at the start of class on Thursday, September 04, 2008.

Deliverables:

1. Form a team of 2-3 people and decide on a group name. Decide on a good application. See the Project Overview for project ideas. Feel free to come up with your own! I prefer that at most two groups attempt the same project. Please send email to Haiyan with your preferences by 5pm, Monday, September 1, 2008. She will maintain a list of available projects. First come first served!
   
   
2. (100 points) Write a two page project proposal/description in the following format:
   1. Name of the project. Name of the students in the group.
   2. The domain of your database application.
   3. What are the application specifications (i.e., what functionality will your completed system provide)?
   4. What aspects of the application will your system model? What will your system not model?
   5. What is the role of each project member in the project?
   6. What other "value-added" facilities could your system support (but that you will not build explicitly)? The goal is for us to mutually agree on a project that is feasible over the course of one semester. If you have questions, meet the instructor or the TA during their office hours.
   
   

Frequently Asked Questions

• What do you mean by the "domain" of an application?
  Answer: Just write a one sentence description of the overall context or situation that your application is a part of. For example, if you decide to work on a books database, you may describe your domain as "the books available at a library" or "the books sold by a bookstore."
  
  
• Since this is a preliminary project proposal, how can we be sure what the role of each project member will be? How detailed should we get into this in our writeup?
  Answer: You don't have to "commit" to anything now; what we are looking for in this question is to see if any of the group members brings special talents/experiences to bear upon the project. For example, if you are building a botanical database and there is a student from the biology department in your group, (s)he can help identify bad design choices from a biology point of view. If one of you has experience in web-based software development, then that would be a good thing to mention.
  
  
• Do we have to create a database schema for our application?
  Answer: No. We just need an English document that says what you will do and some details of what the functionality of the final system is. You will have ample opportunity to create schemas and juicy things like that later on in the semester!
  
  
• Can you explain what you mean by "value-added facilities"?
  Answer: For example, in the books domain, such a facility could be a "recommender system" that makes selections of books for potential customers based on buying trends. In other words, the recommender system is a facility that will be enabled by the presence of a database system. This question is intended to set you thinking in larger-scope, out-of-the-box, and if you can explain potential advantages of databases from a user point of view. If you are an IS person for a corporate organization, you will frequently need to "justify" investing extra resources into developing something like a database/web-system etc. One way to do that is for you to think of what kinds of applications that a DB can "enable".
  
  
• In the part, "what will be modelled (and what will not)", what do you expect us to write?
  Answer: For example, in the books domain, you can write something like "We will model books, authors, publishers, and printers" but not "reviews, bookstores and sales figures" so that all of us are clear on what will be the final outcome.