XML Project Ideas

Question

Hello,

I am a Graduate student and I have a subject on XML this semester (everything about XML using SAX and JAXB). I need to come up with an interesting/innovative project for this and consult with the prof. Since I am a newbie in XML stuff, I am really confused. Some of my ideas are:

1. Some kind of iPhone/Android app using XML (but will this be challenging from XML point of view, if yes, can some body gimme some ideas, like what kind of app? something like tweetdeck or anyother.)

2. Use some web service like Twitter/Google api and develop a web application.

Any random ideas are welcome!! It can be related to anything like data mining, web apps, mobile apps, some open source app usage etc (anything which might help me in future projects/jobs)

My primary objectives are:

1. The project should be very challenging from XML point of view.

2. It should help me in my future job/intern prospects, which I can proudly show in my resume. :P

Thanks!

UPDATE: I should put my question this way: I NEED SOME CHALLENGING PROJECT WHICH INVOLVES XML. For example a twitter app. Need more advice.

Answer 1

1. XML is a data format; there's nothing challenging about it.
2. Most of the people that look at your resume aren't going to know XML from JPL; don't do something challenging in XML, do something that involves money with XML.

Answer 2

How about a project written in your language of choice, that takes a given XML document (and possibly other types) and generates code for it in a specified language (C# 2.0, Java 1.6, C# 3.5, VB.NET 9, etc) to access all the elements, and demonstrates a few XPath expressions available. Then you can make it available online and people can use it to help them how to figure out various ways to query their XML documents :)

And FWIW, I'd use it, because I find trying to remember XPath very annoying, and I often forget about namespace requirements, etc.

Answer 3

I believe anything involving cheese will be a good choice.

Answer 4

Interesting question

As a grad student you'll want to do something more than play around with mark-up and plugging it into someone else's code. And, let's face it, every one is doing Twitter apps and having the 100,000th Twitter app on your CV isn't going to help your employability. You need more of a challenge than that ...

XSLT is Turing-complete so you can do anything with XML that you can do with any other programming language. Why not write a Java source-to-bytecode interpreter in XSLT ? Sounds pretty challenging to me, but if it's not challenging enough for you, try writing a general-purpose evaluator for MathML expressions -- start with the simple stuff like arithmetic, then calculus of one variable, then differential equations. Should keep you busy for most of the semester.

Regards

Mark

Answer 5

One of the most frequently-asked questions on SO and elsewhere pertaining to XML is: "How do I generate an XML document from a schema?" It's straightforward to generate a schema-conformant instance document given a schema. But what if you were more ambitious? How would you analyze a schema, present a comprehensible UI for selecting from the many alternatives available, and construct a corresponding instance document?

(An interesting side project might be constructing an engine for exhaustively testing a schema validator.)

There is very little about XML that you won't know backwards and forwards when you're done with this project, especially if you employ XSLT to build your UI.