Effective use: Try to make effective use of as much of the course material as possible. As we progress through this course, try to incorporate what we learn into your projects. For example, use joins, aggregates, cursors, different transaction isolation levels, indexes, etc.
Completeness: The project must be complete and stable enough for a good demonstration at the end of the course. This requirement is very important. If you are unable to give a reasonable demonstration, your project grade will suffer greatly.
Database size: All project databases must be of nontrivial size. You may interpret nontrivial based on your application. However, (1) there should be at least 10 nontrivial relations; and (2) the total number of attributes times the total number of tuples should be at least 5000. (These are guidelines only; if you feel your application warrants exceptions, come see me during office hours.)
Practicality: The application you build should be of practical use to a sizeable community (at least in the forseeable future).
Innovation: The more innovative ideas you include in your project, the more credit you will receive.
Miscellany: In addition to the above, your project grade will take into account factors such as teamwork, overall effort, timeliness, answers to questions about the project, justification of design decisions, and intermediate and final project reports.