188/4 E-Commerce Group
Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems
Vienna University of Technology
Favoritenstrasse 9-11/188, A-1040 Vienna, Austria

Open topics for Master Theses

Open topics

Offered Master Thesis topics by Hannes Werthner:
  • Mobile applications for image-based search engines The scope of this work is to investigate and analyze mobile applications for image-based search engines. The task is to evaluate different user interfaces from several domains, in order to specify a state-of-the-art interface that can be applied to different domains. The output of this analysis and specification should be used for a prototypical implementation of a mobile app in the area of e-Tourism. Thorough skills in user interface design, iOS and/or Android development are required. Co-supervisor: Dr. Rainer Schuster.

  • Classifying and mapping e-Tourism data sets The scope of the thesis is to apply text mining techniques to classify e-tourism data sets. These sets are hotel descriptions, each description consisting of a set of given attributes (usually Boolean attributes following the so-called GIATA standard) and a free text. In a first step, these descriptions need to be analyzed and harmonized (on a semantic/conceptual as well as schema level). In a next step the tourism objects need to by classified, using both the set of attributes as well as the textual descriptions. In the latter case text mining techniques should be applied. In a final step these classified tourism objects should be mapped to the “harmonized” data schema. In such a way objects can be easily exchanged between different parties. Web Services should be developed to demonstrate the proof-of-concept. The evaluation is based on real world data. Thorough skills in text mining, Java and Web Services are required. Co-supervisor: Dr. Rainer Schuster.

  • Linked Open Data and Austrian Tourism The thesis should look at the current state of the art of linked open data (LOD) in Austria and especially in Austrian Tourism. Based on this survey (with technical as well as a service focus) the student will develop a prototypical application. The specific application domain (sub domain in tourism) depends on the survey of the current state of the art. The student needs knowledge in Web and semantic technologies.

  • Text mining for economic news websites and blogs The scope of this work is to develop and implement an efficient combination of natural language processing techniques for a dataset of crawled economic news from several websites and blogs. Additionally, several clustering algorithms for topic identification should be implemented and compared on this dataset. For an overview of challenges and possible solution approaches please refer to the paper “Text mining for news and blogs analysis” by Berendt in the Encyclopedia of Machine Learning.

  • Discovering the dynamics of social networks This work is intended to implement and to evaluate an algorithm to determine rules according to which social networks change over time. The student should also perform analysis of scalability, time complexity and space requirements of the algorithm. The dataset for evaluation is a citation network among scientists in the areas of Semantic Web and Information Retrieval. To get a better understanding of the general concepts please refer to the paper "Learning and predicting the evolution of social networks" by Bringmann et al. in the IEEE Intelligent Systems, July/August 2010 (vol. 25 no. 4), pp. 26-35

Offered Master Thesis topics by Marco Zapletal:
  • Open-source Enterprise Application Integration The scope of this thesis is to design/implement an EAI prototype using Open Source Technologies. Thorough skills in Java, Apache Camel and Apache ActiveMQ are required.

  • EDIFACT Validation Framework The goal of this thesis is the definition and development of a generic validation framework for EDIFACT messages. Firstly, the different sets of validation rules have to be defined (e.g., syntax validation, message structure validation, message type validation, semantic validation, etc.) on a theoretical level. Secondly, these validation rules should be implemented using Java. In order to support the different EDIFACT message types as well as their code lists, a corresponding parser for the EDIFACT message directories has to be implemented beforehand.
Offered Master Thesis topics by Prof. Dorn:
  • Extraction of Competences from Stackoverflow
    • In Q&A Foren wie z.B Stackoverflow stellen Benutzer dar wie bestimmte im Fall von Stackoverflow technische Programmierprobleme gelöst werden. Sie zeigen damit, dass sie in einem bestimmten Bereich Kompetenzen haben. In der Dissertation von Martin Hochmeister wurde ein Verfahren entwickelt um aus TechScreen solche Kompetenzen zu extrahieren. In dieser Arbeit soll ein ähnlicher Ansatz für Stackoverflow getestet werden und versucht werden auch Trends bei den Kompetenzen zu erkennen.
  • Managing Student Exchange Experience
    • Based on Cased-based Reasoning a Web based information system shall be developed that stores the experience of students that have made a study exchange with Erasmus or some other exchange programme. The system shall enable students that want to make an exchange to find experiences of other students that have similiar interests and preconditions. It has to be defined which standard attributes such a case has and how similarities are to be defined. The system shall be developed with an existent software tool.
  • Competence Evaluation on Base of the ACM Curricula
    • Von der ACM bzw. IEEE werden regelmäßig Curricula für Bachelorstudien in der Informatik herausgegeben. Diese sollen mit einer existierenden Kompetenzontologie abgeglichen werden, und ein System zur Überprüfung der Lücke eines Benutzers geschaffen werden. D.h. ein Student kann in einem Test feststellen, welche Kompetenzen in Bezug auf eins der Curricula ihm/ihr noch fehlen.