I am attempting to learn Java ee in my spare time. I wan't to write an application end-to-end, including a possible Oracle 11g back end (I may have to settle for MySQL... Which is owned by Oracle). That would include writing Oracle Schema's, Tables, View's and Stored procs, some kind of persistence technology like NHibernate, as well as writing the webservice logic. Plus writing a client to hit said service and present the data in a use full way. I have written applications end-to-end before using .net technologies so I kind of have an idea of what I want to do. I basically want to write a Java web-service that any application will be able to hit (.net, or Java) but I will be attempting to hit it using an android application (hopefully using an MVC design pattern). This is essentially going to be a little bit more than a Hello World end-to-end application. I want it to be something semi-use full that I can show to people who use the technology and let them be at least semi-impressed. Since I am basically new to Java EE I am giving myself some time to get all of the coding done. But I need to think of a decent application that isn't trivial, but that isn't so complex that it takes away from me learning the technology.
Say you can try developing a currency conversion application backed by some online forex API and support for database in situations where Internet is unavailable! :)