project.htm

The following are project suggestions, but you are urged to come up with your own project ideas!!!

Introduction
Over the past year, the Johnson School of Management Board of Trustees has come up with a few ideas to catapult the school to the top of the heap. As you already know, the first phase of this process is almost complete with a brand new building to house the facility. Of course, to prepare for the next millenium they would like to have state-of-the-art computer systems, and not just pretty buildings to show. Last week a high-level meeting was held to initiate this phase of the project, wherein the board discussed and brainstormed several improvements they would like made to the current computer infrastructure. Among the ideas mentioned the following areas seemed to gather the greatest consensus of approval:

course enrollment and maintenance system
job/resume/employer tracking and interaction system
in-house stock-exchange trading simulation system

Over the coming months the school is soliciting consultants to provide prototype implementations of these systems while at the same time demonstrating currently available technology to them. This is your task: to design, analyze, implement and demonstrate a working database system that will impress and seal your first million-dollar contract. The board has come up with various conceptions of the functionality they require from each system (outlined below), but these are only initial guidelines. In fact, creative solutions that have not been considered are very likely to attract attention.

Below are the minutes of the pertinent discussions in the last board meeting.

Course enrollment and maintenance system

would like an integrated system to manage all courses, to promote reuse of material and technology year-over-year, and reduce overhead in providing an online course presence
allow different levels of access restrictions to instructors, individual students and administrators, so that course material is not plagiarized or misused
allow online interaction via discussion or question/answer forums, assignment submissions facilities, student evaluation mechanisms, online marking and course mailboxes for professors, TA's and possibly students
provide reports on course enrollment, correlation among courses, grading status, and historical data
allow for online notes mechanism, but without the need for technical know-how
once we have many courses online, perhaps use this enrollment information to schedule class time and exams with minimal conflict and more convenient exam period
create customized information on a per-student basis, such as collect news from each of their courses, create schedules for their classes and exams and encourage interaction among the class via photo databases, etc...

Job/resume/employer tracking and interaction system

would like an integrated system to manage all the employment related activities on-campus
goals: impress employers and facilitate their needs, allow students to maximize their exposure to employers and make use of online information to increase employability
provide resume submission (perhaps also creation) tool, and perhaps create meaningful views of the resumes on file
store employer profiles, public relations and contact information
allow employers to create online applications and provide "mailboxes" for submissions
create "mailboxes" for students and allow them to create presentation pages
provide user-level access restrictions
allow for students comments on employers and store history of hires and interviews
schedule interview times and locations, and provide easy notification mechanism
enhancements include multimedia capabilities for both employers and students

In-house stock-exchange trading simulation system

create a system which will maintain stock market transactions
allow live (real-time) updates of information
provide user registration, and access control mechanisms
allow for real-time external data import (from real exchanges)
implement transactions (buy/sell/bid), logging and validation
show user reports on trading volume, stock high-low, etc...
provide investors with facilities to personalize their view of the data
maintain discussion boards for information exchange (provide filtering?)
enhancements include graphical representation (perhaps real-time) of data, stock tickers?
goal: provide a system of educational value, mimicking real environments as closely as possible

Reality check
The above is meant to give you ideas upon which to base your projects and the spirit in which they will be evaluated. Here's what we would you like to do... Form groups of two, and decide on an area you are interested in. Brainstorm together to try envision the functions you would like to have in the final product, how it will look, how user interaction will occur, and how this all translates into the database and web technologies you should evangelize. It is expected that you will learn to use a web-server, cgi-scripting, asp or jsp, and java to build either applets or servlets, and jdbc and odbc for database connectivity. Proceed to learn about the tools available in the undergraduate lab (the development and evaluation environment), and investigate how they will used and integrated in your project. Once you feel you have a clear understanding of how it is all going to "fit together", create a project proposal and start discussing it with Adrian. Note that the final project proposal is due September 29.

Project Complete and final presentation
At this point, your progress will be examined to verify that you have completed the project. This date is the DEADLINE for project completion. We will conduct project presentations in a very informal atmosphere and allow you to demonstrate your suitability for the contract with the Johnson School of Management Board of Trustees.