The project is an important part of this course, and the purpose behind it is to gain experience in applying the concepts and technologies presented in this course to real-life situations. Each project group will have at least 4 members and at most 5. Your project group will choose a significant, innovative, application of interest to you. The design and implementation of the application utilizes several of the concepts presented in class. Students will be allowed to put together their own groups, if this can not be done, groups will be assigned.

The final mark (35%) for the project will be based on the following grading criteria, however, please note that this a group project and a grouo effort. Each member of the group will get the same mark for the project.

• Proposal: 0% (but if not submitted on time, -3%)
  Submit a one-page document that describes the idea of your project/application, and how does it relate to teh course. Describe the work to be done and how it can be partitioned among the group. It is important that your application be of a complexity and scale that does not exceed the intentions of this project. For this reason, get approval for your application from me. When thinking about a project idea, look at: how compelling is your idea? How much impact will distribued systems make on cost, quality, functionality, etc.? How innovative is your idea? Is it significantly different from existing applications? It is important to note that when grading the final projects more credit will be given to completed projects (even though they are less difficult) than to the ambitious unfinished work. Therefore, in this proposal try to convince me that your project pertains to the course and you will be able to complete it.
• Design Document: 7%
  Submit a five to seven page document that describes the problem (or your project idea) and the proposed solution. Present a detailed description of the software design, including module decomposition, packages used, and partitioning of work among the group. Make sure you include the architecture of your application and what technologies you will be using for this application and why. Report any obstables and how you plan to overcome them. In marking this document, I will look at the proposed solution and its design. The technical content, etc.
• Presentation and Demo: 10%
  The group will demonstrate and defend their work. You must prepare PowerPoint Slides for a 10-minute presentation. Each presentation will be followed by 5-minutes for questions.
• Technical content of final project and quality of system: (18%)
  1. Final Report: 12%
     This is the project final report. 6 - 10 pages (~4000 words), Times 11 Font, Paper includes: an abstract, introduction, relation to other work, the main body of work, conclusions with contribution made, thoughts about any future work, references. The report should report the goals of the project, its relationship to teh course, design and implementation, results and analysis.
  2. Implementation/Coding/Performance Evaluation: (6%)
     This all depends on the project: if you implemented a system then how well the system is implemented, what is the level of functionality, creativity in developing the system, and its usability. If you worked on a research-oriented project, then are the assumptions technically sound, are the ideas feasible, have you validated them, have you compared the performance with similar systems that implement closely-related ideas.

Project items submission dates?

• May 15: form a group and e-mail me the group info (names and student numbers).
• May 31: e-mail me (plain text file) one-page description of your project
• June 19: email me a soft copy (.doc file), and hand in a hard copy of your design document (AT START OF CLASS)
• August 2: project presentations; submit a CD containing all project items: proposal, design document, presntation slides, final report, source code, readme file on how to run your application (AT START OF CLASS)