Re: finding a thesis topic

"Amal" <amalkaau_at_yahoo.com> wrote in message news:b6c98b34.0303011521.922d194_at_posting.google.com...
> Will, am a master student and I have 2 start thinking about my thesis
> topic, but the problem am really confused, really really confused.!! I
> don't know what kind of topics are interesting to start with !!
> My interest field is database ..but still there are a lot of topics 2
> talk about under that field !!! so what am asking about , is helping
> me 2 find a topic that r interesting and not only that but also a
> topic which I will find a lot of resources talked about it. So I can
> make extension to their work..:)
> By the way ,,,,,I wanna ask u about "XML document" and what u think of
> topics related to it

Do you have a thesis advisor? He/she may have some suggestions. (Hint: when I did my MSc, I checked with my University Department for a list of suggested topics).

It may be useful to look at conference proceedings, such as SIGMOD, VLDB, IEEE Data Engineering, DEXA, ... and see what kinds of topics are being actively researched. (Hint: once I had an idea of the topic, I went to the British Library and camped there for a couple of weeks looking at various conference proceedings/journals, etc.).

Your thesis need not be an extension of existing work. You could do something original. OTOH you could look at something that has already been done (e.g. same data), but analyse from another perspective, ...

A good place to look for database-related material is here:

http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/

Where you will find plenty of references to research on XML and Databases :-)

I also suggest you look at Bourret's excellent site:

http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/

For XML Database Products and some other useful resources/links.

HTH

--
Akmal B. Chaudhri
WebDatabases -------- http://www.btinternet.com/~webdatabases/
Undercover Elephant - http://www.toonarific.com/u/undercoverelephant.html