What are the criteria for the project? Are you working on this on your own or in a group? Do you need to have a company sponsor the project? Let me know the details and I might be able to help you with some ideas.

Hi, thanks for trying to help me out, I really appreciate it.

I will be doing the project by myself and no it doesn't have to be sponsored by a company, but it can be if an offer arose.

The criteria for the project is (sorry for all the info but thought it better to give all the info straight from the project book):-

Introduction
This unit will provide you with the opportunity to do a major computing project which will result in some kind of computing product. It is ‘major’ in the sense that it is of significant size and intellectual challenge.
During the first half of your first semester you will produce a Terms of Reference document, which will summarise what your project is all about. Your supervisor and a second marker will give you some feedback on the Terms of Reference so that it can be revised if necessary. At the end of your first semester you should submit to your supervisor a draft version of the analysis chapters of your project report, again so that you may receive some helpful feedback on your work to date. Just before the end of your second semester, you will submit a project report which describes your project. It should include any additional supporting material as appendices. This report will be assessed. At the end of your second semester, you will give a short presentation of your product (which should include a demonstration of it) to your supervisor and second marker, after which they will give you a viva. (A viva is an oral question and answer session, used to assess your understanding). This session will also be assessed. Finally, the quality of the product you have produced will be assessed.

Aims

This unit is designed to provide an opportunity for the expression of individual energy and ability in completing a significant item of work related to the aims and objectives of the course.

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit students should be able to:
1. Construct a problem statement working from unstructured ideas.
2. Plan, schedule, monitor and control the conduct of a small project.
3. Use libraries and other information resources to research previous work.
4. Apply some of the tools and techniques developed during the course.
5. Critically evaluate their own work
6. Communicate the findings of a small project by verbal presentation / demonstration and written report.

Time
You will be expected to spend 100 hours working on the project during the first semester. This work will centre on analysing the problem that you are working on. At the end of the 100 hours, you should have a good understanding of the problem, and a vision of how to solve it and what your product will look like. Your thoughts must be written up initially in a Terms of Reference document and later in a draft of the analysis part of your report. This latter should discuss the problem you have chosen to tackle, review the literature, and identify the approach to the solution of the problem.

During your second semester you will concentrate on solving your project problem, i.e. designing and producing the product. This is when you will carry out your practical work. You are expected to spend 200 hours on this work. You will also complete the project report which should cover the following topics :
 the analysis of the problem (i.e. the final version of the draft you produced in your first semester),
 the product that is the solution to the problem,
 an evaluation of both the product you produced and your management of the project.

By the end of your second semester, you should give your product demonstration, which will be followed immediately by your viva. This complete session will typically last about 30 - 40 minutes. In the first 15 - 20 minutes you should present your product. In the remaining time you will answer questions from your supervisor and second marker about the demonstration and your project report

Deliverables
The assessed deliverables required for each project are :
 a Project Report (including relevant Product Documentation as appendices),
 a product,
 a presentation of the product which should include a demonstration of it (which will be followed by a viva).

The non-assessable deliverables required for each project are :
 a Project Initiation,
 a Terms of Reference Document,
 a draft of the analysis part of the project report.
These are required for effective management of the project and to give students formative feedback.

Ok, that information is good. What are you familiar with software wise? For a project of this level you might want to stick with something you're at least familiar with so that your time is spent building the solution, not learning the tools to build the solution at the same time. Do you have any examples of projects that you're classmates are attempting? Not to copy, but that would at least help narrow down the acceptable scope for your project.

Hi, I've just transfered from the part-time course to the full-time course so I could fully commit myself to the final year so I only actually know 2 people on the course.

One is doing a database for a company either in VB or MySQL using the web to access the database. The other is creating a piece of software that is used by poeple in companys when they come across errors, this software will check for similar errors and display them in the hope they will help the user, he is doing it using a Oracle database.

I like using oracle and VB.Net so a project which would intergrate these two would be good. Been looking on your site and some of the VB stuff in the lecture notes looks really interesting.

Thanks again for your time and help.

John.

Is there anybody out there?

Hi Wally, hope you're still visiting this site, haven't heard from you in a while. I've managed to find a project, but wanted to see what you thougth of it's potential before I submit it as my project.

Thanks again for your help.

John.

Project Ideas

GUI Interface to Database

There are a number of open-source databases—of which MySQL and PostgreSQL are perhaps the best known. Another example of an open-source database—available for both UNIX-like systems such as Linux, and also Windows, is SQLite (http://www.sqlite.org). Unlike others, there is no GUI-based interface—only a console interface.

The aim of this project is to create a GUI interface to SQLite. I have in mind something along the lines of Microsoft Access but this is not essential. Since SQLite is cross-platform, it would seem a good idea for the interface to also be cross-platform, and a number of possibilities would seem to be worth investigating:

• Qt 4 Free Edition (http://www.trolltech.com)
• GTK (http://www.gtk.org)
• wxWidgets (http://www.wxwidgets.org)
• Tcl/Tk

There is also Java, of course, and there may be others worth considering.

You would need to:

• Investigate the possible tools and technologies—not just the platforms, but supporting tools such as form designers too.
• Investigate the type of interface that would be desirable.
• Design and implement the system in a cross-platform manner.

Hey,

Sorry for the delay, haven't been around much for the last week. I like the idea you came up with. Cross-platform development is a good challenge, lots of possibilities to think of.

As for your options for development platforms, regardless of what you decide to use, you're going to want to make sure it can be built into a standard executable program for your target operating systems. Requiring that your users go out and download wxWidgets in order to run your program will automatically reduce the number of users that use your application.

Good luck with the app, let me know if there's anything I can help with

Hi Wally, sorry hadn't replied earlier, I didn't receive an email to say I had a new message on here, just logged in on the off chance today. Thanks for the suggestion, I'm doing the "Terms Of Reference" at the moment then will have to do the analysis side of it, won't be building the thing until after Xmas.

Those were just some suggestions from my supervisor, I think the QT4 from trolltech may be the best option but I haven't properly looked into them yet.

Anyway, thanks again for your help and suggestions, they were gratefully appreciated.

John.

I want a full project report on any windows applications as a sample for gaining an insight