I am in my final year at university atm, and as part of this year i have to write a massive project (10,000 - 15,000 words). It must be related to my degree (Computer Science), and preferably related to real-world problems, although that's not *essential*.

my interests are in networking, web-based stuff, and maybe a bit of databases, so i would ideally like to do some kinda web site with a database backend. All of this must be on linux/unix... i hate windoze.

A good idea a friend of mine had was to create a "Friends Reunited" web site for people on his course. While this has been done before (at friendsreunited.co.uk) it's still a good idea, because it's taylored to his course in particular, and he's designing it from scratch.

Does anyone have any ideas at all about what i could possible do my final year project on?? I know this is a lot to ask, but if you have any clues, please let me know!!

thanks in advance...

is it a practical project to be complete with working program or all in theory?
either way i would suggest looking into xml databases, they will be big me thinks

An interesting project would be to compile your own distro onto a CD.
And before you all shout "But what about Knoppix", stop and listen, while I continue...
Install your own distro (LFS can help) and make it fit on a CD, and make it have several very useful apps. Then make it use cdrtools and put it on a CDRW so that whenever it tries to write to disk it can simply write to the CD. That way, you would have a personal Linux system on a bootable CD, that you can tailor to your own needs, and even have a little room for your own home directory.
Anyone could then just install extra software, provided that it would fit on the CD.
Or, for more flexibility, you could do it with Rewriteable DVDs. The drives are bound to become commonplace soon, and you could fit tons of stuff on it.
You could then use it on any PC. It would be like carrying your system around with you.
Do it do it do it!

well, it must have some design in it, but it must also show that you have at least started to create the real product. You see, they mark them in different areas - research, design, analysis etc... but the weights of the different areas changes depending on the type of project.

An XML database would be a great idea, but what could i use it for?? I can't think of anything at the moment. i think i've been thinking about this too much, and now i'm braindead.

guygriffiths - i like this idea a lot, but unfortunately, i think there's *way* too much i'd have to learn in order to get this anywhere near working - i don't know how to burn CDs in linux, let alone CD-RWs, the whole driver thing in linux confuses the hell out of me, and many other things do as well. thanks for the idea though, i like it a lot... just a shame that it's simply take too long for me to learn all the necessary stuff.

most final year projects are looking for some degree of originality - do a regular shopping web site except base the whole thing off XML, stylesheets, XML database the works, that is original enough and will be pretty impressive to see on a resume/cv when u finished college

p.s. although the website not original the technology is on the cutting edge and that counts a lot

Why not clustering or load-balancing software?

i really like the idea of the XML shopping site actually... i've been wanting a shopping site for myself for some time now anyway.

i decided yesterday that i was going to use XML, so i'm glad you suggested it as well

what do you know of XHTML 1.1?? apparently i can create XML modules in that, which would be good. Read this for more info... (it's another of my project threads): http://support.kdawebservices.com/showthread.php?t=788

xhtml is html but it is strict!!
if the tags arent right then u gotta fix them, not let the editor do it

"Install your own distro (LFS can help) and make it fit on a CD, and make it have several very useful apps."

That is what LifeBoat does.

http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html


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Steve Stites

Not at all related to anything you wanted, and very much theory based, I almost decided to make a sort of concurrency modelling work bench in python / gtk. i did a course on concurrent programming in a previous year, which had some really cool visual aids i wanted to translate to a proper concurrency simlulator...

http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/people/...cs237/lec/5.ps

maybe you'd prefer to dive into a more theoretical area? I always think it makes you look smarter to do more theoretical stuff. that's why i didn't, and made an oscilloscope instead!

probably not your thing, but it's a ncie idea i still think

OK... thanks for the replies, but here's an idea for my project that i had yesterday, please let me know what you think.

OpenOffice uses XML as it's native format for documents.

Web Browsers use HTML as their native language.

What if someone sends you an OpenOffice document and you don't have OpenOffice? you can't read it, right?

What if i create an XML database (using MySQL) to store OpenOffice documents in, with either an XSL or XHTML 1.1 front-end that displays them in HTML format?

The database could have different categories (or directories) for documents, and possibly some kind of version control.

It could also be searchable.

Given the nature of XHTML and XSL, i think it could be displayed in different ways as well... so you could swap the document over to being white text on a black background, for example, or make the fonts bigger for visually impaired.

I can see lots of potential here... plus it's a very new technology.

What do you think?