Final Year Project

MaxPower · 12 Oct 2006 at 17:32

Help me with my final year project.

Right so I have just over a week to decide on a project for university and submite my proposal to my supervsior, I have decided to implement a system in PHP and mySQL but haven't decided on a suitable domain for this. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Ideally I would be looking for a commercial project with an actual client but I think that this is unlikely, the other option is to produce a package template for a system like a bulletin board but there are too many of these out there. Im looking for ideas with a lot of scope so that even if I can't implement every idea I can document it for future versions.

Any ideas or just words of wisdom are greatly appreciated. Thanks for your input chaps and chapettes.

huppy · 12 Oct 2006 at 17:41

If i were redoing my final year project, and it had to incorporate php+mysql (why shouldnt it?

) i would look into developing some sort of A.I. into a website content management system.

For example, picking up on the message boards you mentioned - that have been over done but theres no reason not to improve them -, you could develop an AI algorithm that sorts forum posts by the relevance to the reader, based upon what the reader has clicked on so far while visiting the forum.

e.g. in the 'HTML graphics + programming' forum on here, there might be a user that clicks on all the posts that are about CSS. You could write an algorithm that could detect this kind of behaviour and order the CSS posts to the top of the screen. This is quite a black and white example, but you could incorporate usage trends and other information from the users visits and develop an AI super-algorithm.

From my university experience, my lecturers loved anything AI. If I were you certainly look into making a 'clever' website

toString · 12 Oct 2006 at 17:51

This is part of the functionality of vBulletin positive or negative, you decide...
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=199852
Scroll right the the very bottom.

MaxPower · 12 Oct 2006 at 18:03

Its a great idea as I agree the lecturers and such like are keen on A.I. however I am not and I really disliked the subject during my second year.

punky_munky · 12 Oct 2006 at 18:04

I'm doing a social networking project. Plenty of scope for development there.

zetec452 · 12 Oct 2006 at 18:39

I'm doing a project on using CSS with accessibility. Hopefully will be a nice broad topic.

Hamish · 12 Oct 2006 at 18:47

I'm doing a PHP+MySQL Computer Aided Learning/teaching system. lots of scope there.

GoldenGlory · 12 Oct 2006 at 18:49

I'm doing a project on Web Services and interoperability.

We were told to steer clear of your PHP/MySQL website projects as they will attract no more than a 3rd (at a decent uni

)

MaxPower · 12 Oct 2006 at 19:04

GoldenGlory said:
I'm doing a project on Web Services and interoperability.

We were told to steer clear of your PHP/MySQL website projects as they will attract no more than a 3rd (at a decent uni )

Funny you should say that I was speaking to my supervisor and he said its not a great idea unless you have a client plus Im on as software engineering course. So I'm thinking of going in a completely different direction now :S. Im thinking java client/server system as they seem to be pro OO and client/server. I still have no subject though I need to make a decision soon

JIMA · 12 Oct 2006 at 21:17

Hi,

Something I was working on recently was a Java architecture that allowed client apps to communicate with services running on an application server. A similar idea to Struts although not nearly as polished.

The server part of the architecture resides on an application server (in my case SunONE) and can accept requests from any number of clients using different protocols (I used SOAP and HTTP requests from JSP pages). Each request tells the web server to do a particular task and provides the data that is needed to execute that task.

The server decodes the message into a common form e.g adhering to a particular XML schema using XSLT and uses this to execute the code to process the service. It then decides what to send back to the client depending on the outcome of the service. In the case of a SOAP application this would be a package describing the results of the service, or in the case of a JSP it would be the page to display next.

Lots of scope for using XML, XSLT, XQuery, OO to implement loose coupling between layers etc. I found a lot of information in the Core J2EE Patterns book which provided a lot of ideas e.g Front Controller, ResourceFactory patterns.

It's interesting stuff, although quite heavy going, and I think it would be ideal for a Uni project as it can be expanded no-end with Workflow processing, connectivity to ESB's etc. added in. Good stuff for writing a thesis about and some areas are still pretty new and not set in concrete yet e.g workflow.

Hope that makes some sense, rather a lot of info in a short space there.

Jim

MaxPower · 12 Oct 2006 at 21:26

Thanks for that some very good ideas there. Incorp's all the ideas I would like to implement as well as certain levels of research good scope for development. Much appreciated!