Need Help With Dissertation.

[Ranz_Killa]

Wjkk Wjkf

Brothers and Sisters and children and uncles and aunties...

Im starting my Final Year Next week at Uni. Im studying Business Information Systems. like every other final year student, i have a PROBLEM..

My problem is, i dont know what to do as part of my final year Dissertation...

The project i will be doing is a Technical one, so a system of some type.

I was thinking about making like an online reservation system for this big restaurant, here. So a Website interface, with a database that links to a 2nd system, which is based at the restaurant. Obviously a lot of coding and work has to be done on it.

However, i was talking to a friend, who said that i will have to expand that idea, as some people do that kidna stuff for their A Level projects, which got me thinking..

So, was wondering, if any of u guys have done any technical project like this before? OR even if you have done a different project but a system of some type, will ju pls advise me on wat i can do a project ON, as i have not got any idea at the moment.

Will be very grateful peeps, as im stuck lol..

wjkk Wjkf

[amorphous_singh]

My problem is, i dont know what to do as part of my final year Dissertation...

The project i will be doing is a Technical one, so a system of some type.

Would you mind commenting on how strong you think you technical skills are? For instance would you consider yourself to be a use, a user who can programme (regardless of language), a decent programmer, someone who can hack around on a system compiling and installing software from tarballs (if you don't know whayt his means then you can rule this one out ;-) or someother variation.

Also what sort of platforms are familar with? Windows only or Unix/Linux, other? Are you

[i was thinking about making like an online reservation system for this big restaurant, here. So a Website interface, with a database that links to a 2nd system, which is based at the restaurant. Obviously a lot of coding and work has to be done on it.

However, i was talking to a friend, who said that i will have to expand that idea, as some people do that kidna stuff for their A Level projects, which got me thinking..]

I work in a dept of computing for a university as a Unix Systems Manager and we often host or setup systems to enable student projects. In general we find that any sort of online system is normally a pretty simple project that can be accomplished with a some freeware software and demonstrates very little. There might be lots of requirements analysis but after that very little implentation work.

On the other hand students who get their hands dirty and branch out a bit further tend to learn a lot more and get better grades - the vast majority of students who do their projects with us tend to get firsts of upper 2nd's. They also tend to more employable - I'm always more interested what someone can do as opposed to what they learnt academically.

My general advise to all these students is to steer well clear of any sort of web front end to a database (not matter what terminology you use to disguise the fact thats really all the system is); unless you're doing something genuinally original or innovative; in which case they can be a good project.

So, was wondering, if any of u guys have done any technical project like this before? OR even if you have done a different project but a system of some type, will ju pls advise me on wat i can do a project ON, as i have not got any idea at the moment.

A previous student of ours wrote an email filtering system for me in perl; he had to interface it with a lot of backend software and understand all sorts of setups (we provided him with the necessary details) - it was a good project and we dragged in XML and all sorts of othe stuff. He got a first and I hired him. He's now left and has a better paying job elsewhere. But he learnt a lot and in the process could due all sort of Unixy stuff (mostly Solaris) and program in perl on these systems.

My advise is to think outside of the web frontend/database box. You can do this without even getting into programming - for instance a through investigation of the various FLOSS licencing schemes and their applicability is a good project especially if you can wrap this around a system for an industry. But .....

..... don't listen to me - listen to what you supervisor is saying. They should be able to guide you as appropriate. The above should not be taken as a sure fire way to get a decent project/grade but is based on my experience in academia. Play to your strengths but do try and do something different; most of the project markers I know are bored sensless with web<->db. ;-)

Depending on your skills I could make some suggestions - but I hestitate to do so as I don't want to lead you down a path that is not correct for you; especially as I won't be at hand to offer advise.

But if after reading the above you'd still like some suggestions then I'd be happy to help. If appropriate I can even create an account for you and provide you with command level remote access to appropriate systems. But you might find that sticking a second disk into your own machine and installing any decent linux distro will provide you with the same.

NB - I'm way too busy to actually contribute code etc ;-))

All these words and this post probably still doenst help you much!

[amorphous_singh]

Erm there seem to be endless typo's in my previous reply - apols. The result of too much haste! I can't seem to get into edit mode to change them. So erm ignore over them ;-)

This reply is typo free - I hope!

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