Ideas for the class project

Here are some rather unorganized ideas that may be useful for deciding on a topic for the class project. Note that some of these are too simple for a project and others may be too complex. Treat the following merely as a collection of ideas from which you can pick some you like, combining them to get a project that both interests you and is sufficiently challenging from a technical viewpoint.

See also: Project Guidelines.

Online store of some kind (sim. to amazon.com and friends)
	books, CDs, electronic music (e.g., mp3), ...
	catalog, browsing, shopping cart functions, payment,
	fulfillment, ...

Library DB
	Search collections, check status, checkout anc checkin,
	incorporate existing system

Room scheduling
	distributed authorization
	very low maintenance
	easy report generation
	clickable, annotated map as UI

Personal Information Manger (PIM)
	contacts, addresses, phones, ...
	appointments
	diary
	to-do list

Something similar to the Elisp package bbdb.el

Meeting scheduler

XML in a RDB/ORDB

UMD Parking lot information DB
	best parking based on destination, cost, etc.
	fallback lots
	special cases
	ease of update

Restaurant/Cafe/Bar/Pub/... reviews DB

Class schedule, prereq, comments, grading, etc. DB

CS Personnel and/or Machine DB  (simple)
	Info about every CS "entity": people, machines, labs, vending
machines, rooms, ...  

Bank of AVW (simple)
	Debit, credit, billing, interest, ...

Job postings DB
	Openings, contacts, references, reviews, requirements, bidding, ...

USENET Data Miner (hard)
	Import data from USENET into RDB (fact table), import data
from other sources for author info, group info, org info, ... 
(property tables), mine

Data mining Web server logs (hard)
	Similar to USENET Data Miner

Email (SMTP) server using a DBMS
	focus on novel functionality enabled or simplified by DBMS

USENET (NNTP) server using a DBMS
	focus on novel functionality enabled or simplified by DBMS

Storing graph data in a relational DB?

DBMS survey(hard)
	Implement a very simple project on N DBMSs (preferably open
source or free) for N > 3 and report experience.
	
DBMS interface survey
	Implement a very simple project using M libraries or APIs
(e.g., Perl libraries, Python libraries, and ODBC and JDBC bindings
for C++) for M > 3 and report experience.

Historical weather DB
	retrieve, parse, and store weather information from NWS and
other *public domain* sources over time; implement browsing and
querying that can be used to discover trends, records, trivia.

Auction database
	Similar to eBay.com

Historical traffic DB
	Similar to historical weather DB.

Netnews server
	enhanced querying, consistency, security and control

Personal finance DB
	Download data from the Net in popular formats (QIF, OFC, ...);
analyze in interesting ways; trends; bill payments

Write an ODBC or JDBC driver(ambitious)

Database for WMUC (service)


Sudarshan S. Chawathe