This is a group assignment in which you are to work together to write a report and also put together a lecture during the last week of classes. Students will divide themselves into two groups (five or six students to a group). One group will work on Object Databases, while the other group is responsible for XML and Web Data. The objective of this assignment is to get you to work together in groups towards a common goal that requires research, writing, and presentation.
The textbook has one chapter dedicated to each of these topics, Chapter 14 and 15. Each group must present information that is not found by reading the textbook, thus your report and presentation will use the information in the book as a starting point and assume that the audience has read and understood this material. The instructor will not lecture on either of these topics but can be used as a resource to understand the material in the textbook.
Your report and presentation will be evaluated on the quality of the information that you provide, specifically as it relates to the content already provided in the textbook, as well as to how it relates to other topics covered in class (e.g. normalization, query processing and optimization). Additional criteria to be evaluated includes the organization of the paper, the references you cite, and the actual writing (grammar, spelling, clarity, etc.).
It is worth repeating that the report and presentation are to be original work created by each group. You have each signed an honesty statement stating that you understand the plagiarism policy. You may not include material from any other source in the body of the paper, except that you may directly quote or paraphrase information from cited sources, enclosing it in quotes and following it with the reference citation from which you extracted it -- such quoting or paraphrasing should be limited as it does not count as part of the assignment since it is not your own. Any material included in your report and/or presentation that comes from another source (i.e., figures, tables, sample code, etc) must clearly indicate the source where that material originates from. The class syllabus contains links to the campus policy on cheating and plagiarism.
In addition to the report, each group will also attach to the report descriptions of the contributions by each member of the group. The contributions must be described explicitly and amount of time spent on each contribution should be stated.
The first four assignments in the class add up to 132 points. Since this is a group activity that is being assigned with five weeks left in the semester, it will be worth 100 points. There will be a couple of more individual assignments that will be worth a total of 43 points, thus bringing the total points for the assignments to 275 points. All these points are 25% of your overall grade in the class as specified in the syllabus.
The report is to be delivered in hard copy form and via E-mail by the due date, December 11, 2007. Both groups have the same deadline for the report. Please use a 12-point font with 1-inch margins all around and single spaced lines. You may create and include figures also as you may deem helpful and appropriate. Do not feel compelled to produce a lenghty paper – quality is critical not quantity. Finally, be sure to include a bibliography where you list all references considered in the research and writing process.
The presentations will be on two dates, Tuesday December 11th and Thursday December 13th. The specific date that each group is assigned will be determined later.