search engine data mining time estimation

If I were to code a data mining tool  - aggregation, statisitcal data,grouping of search results of one of the commercial search engines,  how much time would people place for an estimate of work?
Bear in mind this thing has to work to be used in production by many people per day.
One person is responsible for the design and coding, as well as developing search specific and data mining specific algorithms with tight bounds on runtime.
Would 6 months be a good rough initial estimate? Is thing more in the realm of research than proper software engineering?
The reason I am asking is I might get a contract from one of them and need to give some estimates upfront.

Anon
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Suppose you development costs 3 man/years, hire 6 people to do the job in 6 months.

Evgeny Gesin /Javadesk.com/
Sunday, January 18, 2004

Six months seems about right ... give or take three years ...

Honestly, your specification is too vague to even begin giving estimates for.  Let alone the countless variables that may influence the project duration ... how many people you have, how much experience they each have, the language and algorithms chosen to implement the solution, how well you work with the end customer, the amount of QA effort put into the project ...

If you have no idea how to estimate a software project, Steve McConnell's book  _Rapid Development_ is a good place to start learning.

Alyosha`
Sunday, January 18, 2004

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