B.

Comp Dissertation Format

CS4101 B.Comp. Dissertation (Final Year Project Report) Format

1.

Introduction

This document describes the standard format for the final project report to be submitted as part of the fulfillment
of the CS4101 B.Comp Dissertation at the Departments of Computer Science and Information Systems, School
of Computing of NUS. Students have to ensure their reports conform to the required format before submission
for examination.

2.

Final Project Report

2.1

Length of the Report

The total length of the main report shall not exceed 55 A4 pages. The text of the main report shall be spaced 1.5
lines, with a font size of at least TIMES ROMAN 12. Appendices and other manuals can be in single space and
a smaller font size. Appendices should be kept small and bounded together with the main report. However, user
manuals, programmer manuals and bulky data dictionaries should be bounded as separate volumes. Please
consult your project advisor if you are unsure which materials you should include in the main report and
appendices and the length of appendices. The report should be clearly written, and should include only relevant
information. Indeed the inclusion of too much detail may cause the evaluation committee to doubt whether the
student has really learnt how to distinguish the important issues from the trivial ones.
2.2

Format

All B.Comp. Dissertation reports must be prepared in the following sequence:

i. Front hard cover
ii. Title page
iii. Abstract
iv. Acknowledgment page (if any)
v. Table of contents
vi. Main report
vii. References (or bibliography)
viii. Appendices
ix. The back hard cover
Some of the important points on the report format are explained in the following sub-sections.
2.2.1

Front and Back Cover and Binding

Ring binding should be used for all reports and appendices. As sketched in the sample pages, the words
B.Comp Dissertation, the project title (bigger font size), the students name, the words Department of
Computer Science or Department of Information Systems, School of Computing, National University of
Singapore and the academic year (e.g., 2008/2009 ) should appear on the front cover.

B.Comp Dissertation Format

Front Cover of the Final Report Sample

B.Comp. Dissertation

Development of a Database Link Between

Mainframe and PC

By
Chua Meng Lee

Department of Computer Science

School of Computing
National University of Singapore

2008/2009

B.Comp Dissertation Format

2.2.2

Title Page

The first page of the final report should be a title page. It should consist of the words B.Comp. Dissertation,
the Title (centered, bold and two size larger), the Author Name, the words School of Computing, National
University of Singapore, 20XX, and Project No, Advisors name, and deliverables (e.g., number of document
volumes, software, hardware and etc.) should also be included. The cover page should fit on one page.

Title Page Sample

B.Comp. Dissertation

Development of a Database LINK

Between Mainframe and PC

By
Chua Meng Lee

Department of Computer Science

School of Computing
National University of Singapore
2008/2009

Project No: H90000

Advisor: Assoc Prof Jarzabek Stanislaw
Deliverables:
Report: 1 Volume
Manual: 1 Volume
Program: 1 Diskette
Database: 1 Diskette

B.Comp Dissertation Format

3.2.3

Abstract Page

It consists of an abstract of the report of not more than 200 words outlining the project. The abstract should be
comprehensible to readers of the report and enable them to judge the reports potential interest. The Keywords
and Subject Descriptions should follow immediately after the abstract in the same page, each with not more than
five careful selected items. The descriptors should be chosen from the latest version of The Full Computing
review Classification Scheme of the ACM Computer Review. Any suitable word that reflects the nature and
content of the project may be chosen as a keyword. The student should consult the project advisor when in
doubt which keywords and descriptors be used.

Abstract - Sample

Abstract
The use of Wireless Sensor Networks for environmental monitoring has become
increasingly popular over the past decade due to its affordability, ease of deployment
and customisation, as well as its potentiality in the processing of sensed data. One of the
greatest challenges in this field would be in the design and implementation of an
efficient routing protocol which takes into account the various limitations of Wireless
Sensor Networks, such as battery life, limited storage capacities and high probability of
packet losses. Besides this, it is also extremely difficult to evaluate the performance of
such a protocol under crisis scenarios, due to its infrequency and unpredictability. In our
work, we have designed a routing protocol based on optimised Virtual Polar Coordinate
Routing (VPCR) (Newsome and Song, 2003) for use with our three-dimensional
testbed, comprising of 48 MICAz (Crossbow) motes spread across two floors of a
building. We have also developed a Java-based application with features for Event
Emulation and simple nodal analysis to assist us in our experiments. The overall
performance of our protocol will be gauged based on the average Path Stretch Factor
and path length comparisons between optimised and nave VPCR.
Subject Descriptors:
C.2.1
C.2.2
C.2.4
C.4
I.2.9

Network Architecture and Design

Network Protocols
Distributed Systems
Performance of Systems
Robotics

Keywords:
Wireless communication, routing protocols, distributed applications, fault
tolerance, sensors
Implementation Software and Hardware:
Ubuntu Linux 7.04 Feisty Fawn, TinyOS 2.x, NesC 1.2.8a, Java 1.6 SE, Xbow
Motes, Tembusu cluster

B.Comp Dissertation Format

2.2.4

Acknowledgement

Following the abstract page, students may want to acknowledge the contributions or assistance of others to the
project. It should be kept in one double-spaced A4 page.

2.2.5

Table of Contents

In addition to the heading of each section, sub-heading can also be used but its depth should be kept to a
minimum. Details of appendices should also be given here. Students may use more than one A4 page for the
content page.

Table of Contents

Title
Abstract
Acknowledgement
List of Figures

i
ii
iii
iv

Introduction
1.1
The use of Database Links
1.2
Mainframe and PC Intercommunications
1.3
Other Distributed Database Procedures

1
1
3
4

Study of Existing Packages

2.1
Framework
2.2
Machintosh
Smalltalk
2.3
2.4
General Windowing Features

5
5
7
8
9

System Design Criteria

3.1
Feasibility and Critical factors
3.2
Hardware Requirement
3.3
Software Requirement
3.4
Program Design

11
11
13
14
16

Implementation
4.1
Data Structure
4.2
Illustration of the Data Model
4.3
Algorithm Used

23
23
27
29

Testing Methodology

40

Conclusions
6.1
Summary
6.2
Limitations
6.3
Recommendations for Further Work

45
49
52
55

References

Appendix A Program Listing

vi

Appendix B How to Use the Program

vii

B.Comp Dissertation Format

2.2.6

Main report

The structure of the main part of the report will vary according to the nature of the project. It is both convenient
and conventional to organise the report in a hierarchical structure: Chapters, Sections, Sub-sections, and etc. In
general, there should be an Introduction giving an overview and background of the project. Also, there is
generally a section for Conclusions, and one for Recommendations where appropriate. Students should consult
their project advisors on how to structure
2.2.7

References

A list of all books, report, papers, etc., referred to in the report or consult during the course of the project should
be given under the References or Bibliography section. Please see Section 2 for format for references and
citation.
2.2.8

Appendices

Information of secondary importance (and information whose inclusion would break the flow of the report)
should be placed in Appendices. These include programme listing, electronic data sheets, data dictionary, and
etc.
2.2.9

Page number and Section number

The maximum number of pages for main report is 55. The page number here starts from the first page of
Introduction to the last page of conclusion/summary.
All other pages like abstract, contents, list of figures, list of tables, list of abbreviations, acknowledgements, list
of references, bibliography, are not counted in these 55 pages.
Please number 1, 2, 3, to 55 (the maximum) for your main report and number i, ii for all other pages in front of
the main report. You are requested to continue your main report numbering for reference/bibliography pages
that come at the end.
A hierarchical numbering scheme for section numbering shall be used. For instances, use 1 for section one, 2 for
section 2, 1.1 for the subsection of section 1, and etc (See the Table of Contents).

3.

Format for Reference Citation and References

3.1

Citation in the main text (Base on Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 3rd
ed).

Citation in the main text should be in the form of the author(s) surname(s) followed by the year of publication.
When there are more than two authors and fewer than six author, cite all authors the first time the reference
occurs; in subsequent citation include only the surname of the first author followed
by a et al. When a work has six or more authors, cite only the surname of the first author followed by et al and
the year for the first and subsequent citations. For instances:
An interface processor is the basis for another human-computer interaction model (Edmonds, Jones and
Davies, 1982). [ First citation ]
Architecture of an application system produced using the Dialogue management System (Edmonds et
al, 1982) approach is shown in Fig 9..[ Second citation ]
In Bass et al (1981), the interface for a statistical ..[ First and subsequent citation for a work more
than six authors ]

3.2

List of References

B.Comp Dissertation Format

References should be ordered alphabetically according to the surname of the first author (use the editor name or
the organisation name when the author name is absent)
3.2.1

Journal articles

Dicken, G.W., Leitheiser, R.L., Wetherbe, J.C. and Nechis, M. (1984) key information Systems Issues for the
1980s. MIS Quaeterly, Vol.8, No. 3, September 1984, pp. 135 160.
Gorry, G.A. and Scott-Morton, M.S. (1971). A Framework for Management Information Systems. Sloan
Management review, Vol.13, No.1, Fall 1971, pp. 55 70.
Gorry, G.A. and Scott-Morton, M.S. (1971b). A New Framework for Management Information Systems. Sloan
Management review, Vol.13, No.2, Fall 1971, pp. 20 30.
3.2.2

Books or a report

Kroeber, D.W and Watson, H.J. (1987). Computer-based information Systems: A Management Approach.
Second Edition, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1987.
3.2.3

Conference paper

Gouda, M.G. and Dayal, U. (1971). Optimal semijoin schedules for query processing in local distributed
database systems. In Proceedings of ACM SIGMOD International Conference on the Management of
Data, (Ann Arbor, Michican, April 29 May 1, 1980.) ACM, New York, 1981, pp. 164 165.
3.2.4

Manuals

IBM. (1984). Information Systems Planning Guide. Fourth Edition, July 1984. SPSS Inc. (1983). SPSS-X
Users Guide. McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, 1983.
3.2.5

Unpublished reports and theses

Thorpe, A. (1982). Stability tests on a tender-price prediction model. M.Sc. Thesis, Loughborough University of
Technology, UK.; 1982.

4.

Others

In case you wrote a paper describing your B.Comp. Dissertation work for possible conference publication (up to
10 pages), you can include the paper in the B.Comp. Dissertation Appendix. In such case, the page limit for
your final report is 55 pages plus 10 pages for the paper. Note that it is not obligatory for you to include a
paper into your FYP Report.

B.Comp. Dissertation Coordinator

May 2008