Help with a Software Project?
Discussion
I am in the final year of my MSc in software engineering and need to pick an idea for an end of year project. Generally most people write some form of web based application like a booking system or server based game with multiplayer functions for example.
The project is awarded more points if you use new technologies or technologies that we have not been taught (UNIX, C++, VC++, SQL, Oracle, HTML, Java, JSP etc). I have a few basic ideas for projects but really want to make something that will give me a distinction rather than a merit.
So with the infinite genius that inhabits PH I thought I’d pose the question to you…..
As the university holds the intellectual rights I am not looking for something that will make me a ton of cash and therefore them so ideas that have already been done are also fine….I guess my main interest is in exploring a new area of software engineering and getting those grades, so what is hot at the moment and what is worth getting into... c# .net????
The project is awarded more points if you use new technologies or technologies that we have not been taught (UNIX, C++, VC++, SQL, Oracle, HTML, Java, JSP etc). I have a few basic ideas for projects but really want to make something that will give me a distinction rather than a merit.
So with the infinite genius that inhabits PH I thought I’d pose the question to you…..
As the university holds the intellectual rights I am not looking for something that will make me a ton of cash and therefore them so ideas that have already been done are also fine….I guess my main interest is in exploring a new area of software engineering and getting those grades, so what is hot at the moment and what is worth getting into... c# .net????
Plotloss said:
Write a universities admission system in CICS COBOL
That sort of thing should fit right in with the average software engineering lecturer.
BTW do you still get taught about things like the Z specification language on Software Engineering?
Thanks Plotless, we did some assembler which was a nightmare (nested for loop!). I'm looking to move more to the java side of things really and want something that I can showcase when I change careers but an online admission system would be something I could work on...did something similar with some coursework where I produced a self marking online test with registration process through SQL and DB....That sort of thing should fit right in with the average software engineering lecturer.
BTW do you still get taught about things like the Z specification language on Software Engineering?
Edited by Toobin on Tuesday 13th November 21:26
Archaic technology found on mainframes, as mainframes are essentially batch only machines CICS came along to manage interactive sessions so they didnt drop.
I was being a bit obtuse, for which I apologise.
AJAX calling a SOAP middleware layer to some sort of DBMS is the technology flavour of the moment. You could do the front end in just about anything, the middle layer in JAVA and the back end in just about anything.
I was being a bit obtuse, for which I apologise.
AJAX calling a SOAP middleware layer to some sort of DBMS is the technology flavour of the moment. You could do the front end in just about anything, the middle layer in JAVA and the back end in just about anything.
Plotloss said:
Archaic technology found on mainframes, as mainframes are essentially batch only machines CICS came along to manage interactive sessions so they didnt drop.
I was being a bit obtuse, for which I apologise.
AJAX calling a SOAP middleware layer to some sort of DBMS is the technology flavour of the moment. You could do the front end in just about anything, the middle layer in JAVA and the back end in just about anything.
Yeh I thought you were taking the pI was being a bit obtuse, for which I apologise.
AJAX calling a SOAP middleware layer to some sort of DBMS is the technology flavour of the moment. You could do the front end in just about anything, the middle layer in JAVA and the back end in just about anything.
ss but being a true gent I walked around rather than into it….may edit my original comments now and make you look bad after spending the rest of week thinking of a witty response.SOAP sounds interesting and worth a look however
If you want to go tangential, then you could do something in a concurrent hardware language. Not that many jobs in it though if you're thinking final year project CV building.
If you wanted to keep it software oriented then you could go for something in ADA. With the hardware languages (VHDL/Verilog/SystemC), theres loads of stuff you could pull in to beef up the project and make it spectacular whilst keeping the commitment to it fairly low, in the same way as you would get in C/C#/VB. I'm not so sure that's the case with ADA.
Anyhow, my main thinking is that multiprocessor computers are becoming commonplace, and it might be worthwhile doing something that could exploit that to the full, since there is still so much single threaded stuff around.
Maybe a pixel shader or an audio processor?
If you wanted to keep it software oriented then you could go for something in ADA. With the hardware languages (VHDL/Verilog/SystemC), theres loads of stuff you could pull in to beef up the project and make it spectacular whilst keeping the commitment to it fairly low, in the same way as you would get in C/C#/VB. I'm not so sure that's the case with ADA.
Anyhow, my main thinking is that multiprocessor computers are becoming commonplace, and it might be worthwhile doing something that could exploit that to the full, since there is still so much single threaded stuff around.
Maybe a pixel shader or an audio processor?
Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 13th November 16:52
Random thought from another PH thread ... Google and co. have released a beta SDK for their Android mobile phone platform. Depending when your project needs to be submitted, the hardware may not be available but apparently the SDK ships with an emulator. Android platform seems pretty sensible ... Linux plus a Java VM, a bunch of supporting services to provide a GUI, some middleware, a database engine. All exposed through Java APIs. Could turn into a serious platform, might fizzle out.
I had an absolute brilliant idea the other day 
Its an online palm reading service. You get the mug punter to scan his palm in and pay you 10$. You map the palm and do a look up of what all the squiggly lines mean from a database and spew back a palm reading to the punter. It uses loads of diffrent technologies:
Digital mapping
Pattern recognition
Internet
Expert systems
Not sure wether a standard scanner would be up to the job though.
Its an online palm reading service. You get the mug punter to scan his palm in and pay you 10$. You map the palm and do a look up of what all the squiggly lines mean from a database and spew back a palm reading to the punter. It uses loads of diffrent technologies:
Digital mapping
Pattern recognition
Internet
Expert systems
Not sure wether a standard scanner would be up to the job though.
I would do a XSLT driven C# ASP.NET front end (pref with some simple AJAX stuff), C# web service business layer with ACCESS or alike as the data layer.
As for the subject, how about a taxi booking system? T'is what I did and teaches you quite a lot about UI, business rules and databases.
As for the subject, how about a taxi booking system? T'is what I did and teaches you quite a lot about UI, business rules and databases.
plasticpig said:
I had an absolute brilliant idea the other day
Its an online palm reading service. You get the mug punter to scan his palm in and pay you 10$. You map the palm and do a look up of what all the squiggly lines mean from a database and spew back a palm reading to the punter. It uses loads of diffrent technologies:
Digital mapping
Pattern recognition
Internet
Expert systems
Not sure wether a standard scanner would be up to the job though.
A clandestine means to gather biometric data????Its an online palm reading service. You get the mug punter to scan his palm in and pay you 10$. You map the palm and do a look up of what all the squiggly lines mean from a database and spew back a palm reading to the punter. It uses loads of diffrent technologies:
Digital mapping
Pattern recognition
Internet
Expert systems
Not sure wether a standard scanner would be up to the job though.
I reckon you must work for the stas.... I mean government!
BTW, Check out SharpDevelop (http://www.icsharpcode.net/opensource/sd/) for a free editor, download the .NET SDK and surf http://www.asp.net/ for some hints and tips. Oh, and if you use MS SQL Server Express Edition it is also free.
Plotloss said:
Archaic technology found on mainframes, as mainframes are essentially batch only machines CICS came along to manage interactive sessions so they didnt drop.
I was being a bit obtuse, for which I apologise.
No, you were being an arrogant prick.I was being a bit obtuse, for which I apologise.
Plotloss said:
AJAX calling a SOAP middleware layer to some sort of DBMS is the technology flavour of the moment. You could do the front end in just about anything, the middle layer in JAVA and the back end in just about anything.
However, you redeemed yourself here.... AJAX.The whole world is shifting back towards a mainfain centric architecture. Dumb clients send trivial requests to a central CPU and it returns results. After all, if all the data is on a central CPU, that's where the processing needs to be done.
With AJAX, JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, CSS, what ever you want to call it, coupled with the stupid bandwidth that even a home user can get as a connection to the Internet, this is the way forward.
AJAX rocks, don't believe me? Check Out
Click the Enable Autosearch check box and then type a few characters into the 'Name' text box.
The page sends an AJAX request back to the server based upon what you put into the text box, the DB returns a list of matching reocrsd that are populated into the table.
Awesome stuff.
I use it in our current App to vaildate filter strings that get converted into SQL. If you type in a valid string that the system can translate into SQL then a message comes back to the browser and it changes the back ground colour of the text box to green. If you type something that the server cannot understand then the text box turns red.
Edited by mystomachehurts on Tuesday 13th November 18:22
dilbert said:
plasticpig said:
I had an absolute brilliant idea the other day
Its an online palm reading service. You get the mug punter to scan his palm in and pay you 10$. You map the palm and do a look up of what all the squiggly lines mean from a database and spew back a palm reading to the punter. It uses loads of diffrent technologies:
Digital mapping
Pattern recognition
Internet
Expert systems
Not sure wether a standard scanner would be up to the job though.
A clandestine means to gather biometric data????Its an online palm reading service. You get the mug punter to scan his palm in and pay you 10$. You map the palm and do a look up of what all the squiggly lines mean from a database and spew back a palm reading to the punter. It uses loads of diffrent technologies:
Digital mapping
Pattern recognition
Internet
Expert systems
Not sure wether a standard scanner would be up to the job though.
I reckon you must work for the stas.... I mean government!
mikeg996 said:
Do a study of outsourcing strategies - and get some Russians to do your software project for you
Already thinking down those lines by running this thread I guess Some pretty strong pulls towards AJAX here then I guess....already looked it up on wikipedia too, now just 365 days to go until I tell you how I got on
Thanks for all the comments even the suggestion on palm reading.....I'm sure it will become a standard feature in the caravans of tomorrow
mystomachehurts said:
The whole world is shifting back towards a mainfain centric architecture. Dumb clients send trivial requests to a central CPU and it returns results. After all, if all the data is on a central CPU, that's where the processing needs to be done.
Are you sure? Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight says otherwise. If Microsoft release a CLR that runs in the browser then you'll be able to do away with the Web server as we know it and execute all your code on the client. There is already a "Tiny CLR" that will execute a subset of c#. If the take up of Silverlight (Microsoft's version of Flash, which currently requires a plug-in to be installed) is big enough, imagine the possibilities of being able to write c# in the browser (no more f-ing JavaScript).
Plotloss said:
Write a universities admission system in CICS COBOL
That sort of thing should fit right in with the average software engineering lecturer.
BTW do you still get taught about things like the Z specification language on Software Engineering?
That sort of thing should fit right in with the average software engineering lecturer.
BTW do you still get taught about things like the Z specification language on Software Engineering?
- Argh!!!*
If you want something totally different to the systems and methodologies you have been taught, how about Verilog or VHDL? These are languages you use to program FPGAs (basically blank logic chips). The use of FPGAs has taken off big time recently as they allow you to put entire systems on a single chip. Having millions of logic gates available to do what you want sounds like a hardware job, but in reality it is all done in a high level software specification language.
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