Project

The project is to design and implement a database for a real-world application chosen by the student. Ideally, the project should be chosen to meet a real-world need that actually exists and that you are familiar with or can find out about in the first few weeks of the term.

This project is an essential part of the course learning experience. The reason for the real-world emphasis is that some of the things you need to know to be a good database designer cannot easily be learned any other way. The simple fact is that the real world is much richer and messier than any textbook example, with exceptions and special cases conspiring either to invalidate your design or to make it hopelessly complex. It is sometimes difficult to judge how much of this richness and messiness you should try to capture in your design. Many principles of database design which seem very straightforward when applied to textbook examples suddenly seem much less clear when you try to fit them to a real-world situation.

Since designing and implementing a real-life database is a lot of work, course participants are strongly encouraged to work together in groups, each group choosing a separate project. You're welcome to work with any others in the class that you wish, regardless of who is taking the class for credit and who is not. The project consists of about a dozen well-defined steps, to be divided up among the members of the group. The ideal group size would be 3-4 people, but any size from 2 to 6 people will be acceptable.

Early in the term, I will discuss these project steps, which are based on several prior offerings of the course. Especially if your group is large, you'll probably want to meet with me after class early in the term to get some help dividing up the tasks among the people in your group fairly, and taking into account the different talents in the group.

If you have an idea for a real-world project and would like to interest others in working with you on it, I'll be happy to help you publicize your idea to the class if you wish. Let me know as early in the term as possible, or even before the term starts.