The term project is an important part of this course. Projects can be conducted individually, or in teams of two students. In the project you will pick a research problem related to the topic of the course and work on it. You can also pick a research problem from some other area (your area!) with a cloud computing twist to it. Successful projects could lead to publishable results. Obviously, publishing is not a requirement, but this is the mindset that you should have.
You will need to form your team and come up with a project idea in the first month of the term. I strongly encourage you to come up with your own project ideas. Choose some open question from the papers on the reading list. Or pick a problem that interests you from outside of databases and give it a cloud computing twist. I will try to help by presenting some possible directions for projects in class.
The project proposal should be one page long in 10 point font. It should include the title of the project, names of the team members, a description of the problem you will work on, why it is important, and how you will attempt to solve it. Try to clearly identify your objectives, methodology, milestones, and metrics for success.
The project report should be written in research paper style. It should motivate your problem, discuss related work, and present your solution in detail including its benefits and limitations. The report should be 10 pages maximum, although shorter project reports are encouraged! The report should be formatted in the two-column ACM proceedings format, using one of the ACM SIG Proceedings Templates. The ACM templates include headings for "Categories and Subject Descriptors," "General Terms," and "Keywords." You do not need to use any of these headings.
You will be evaluated on the depth and novelty of your work, on the quality of your report, and on your research methodology (problem definition, choosing the correct level of abstraction, cleanness of implementation, experimentation methodology, etc.).