Research question

I will take as a sign of genuine interest that my MSc student emailed his research question at 9 p.m. on a Sunday. It is either a naive question, or very well packed.

Is it possible to implement a "real time" synchronisation between [system X] and [system Y]?

Well of course I know the answer already, but it's not that simple. I cannot go with the easy way and use the SOAP API in this case what is usually used in [system X] integrations. It has it's limits and is not suitable for this for various reasons.

I took a guess at unpacking it for an hour when I found it at 8:15 Monday morning, responding with an admittedly lengthy e-mail containing theoretical and practical questions to consider. Still not knowing much about his professional or academic experience, I tried to be clear that I would not expect to see all or even most of the questions addressed in a relatively short Master's thesis. I don't want to simply hand the student an outline for his thesis, but I also don't want to be too distant from his work. I also emphasised repeatedly the need to link his case study to the outside theoretical and practical literatures.

As of this writing, my co-supervisor had not responded to the student's message. I also don't quite know what to expect from her. She has supervised enough students to fill a cabinet of printed thesises, and almost certainly has different but as yet unstated expectations than I do. If we do conflict, I intend to meet her closer to her end of the middle since I'm still very unfamiliar with the local supervising customs and standards, as soon as I understand where that middle is.