Megabyte Ltd. has collaborated for the third year running with the University of Malta’s Faculty of ICT to hold ‘The Megabyte IT Project Award’.

This year’s prize, an IPad 4, was recently presented at Megabyte’s premises by David Galea, head of business development & marketing to B.Sc (Hons) ICT student Sean Caruana for his final year project entitled ‘A visual query building tool for MS SQL server’.

Mr Caruana’s project objectives were to produce a visual query builder that improves on shortcomings in existing products, by prioritising usability and expressive power. Such a system had to be flexible enough to suit both expert and non-expert users alike, providing a balance between usability and functionality. Ultimately, both simple and complex queries should be created in a user-friendly manner without the use of SQL.

The annual award marks Megabyte’s continuous support in developing and promoting local talent in the ICT field. The University of Malta’s IT Faculty grades projects for their academic merits, which comprised 30% of Megabyte’s scoring, with a further 30% allotted for creativity and innovation and 40% for commercial adaptability, with emphasis being placed on the practicality and realistic application of the projects.

Megabyte’s David Galea said “This year's award was a very hard choice with very little among the runners. However, Sean's project shone through due to the scope of bringing what is normally a technical process into a non-expert's hands. Sean's idea was great, the project execution was impeccable and the final result was something we were very impressed with".

The nominees for the 2013 Megabyte IT Project Award were Christa Agius, Adrian Duca, Kurt Portelli and Julian Zammit, all of whom deserve special mention for their impressive projects and outstanding quality of work.