implementation of mvc (model-view-controller) design architecture...

Indian Res. J. Ext. Edu. 16 (3), September, 2016 1

Implementation of MVC (Model-View-Controller) designarchitecture to develop web based Institutional repositories:

A tool for Information and knowledge sharing

Vinod Kumar1, Abhinav Kumar2, A.K. Sharma3 and Dhiraj Singh4

1&3, Sr. Scientist, 4. Director, ICAR-Directorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research, Bharatpur - 3213032. Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, India

Corresponding author e-mail: [email protected]

Paper Received on June 08, 2016, Accepted on August 18, 2016 and Published Online on August 21 , 2016

ABSTRACT

The Institutional Repositories (IR) is a very powerful idea that can serve as an essential tool for Information andknowledge sharing. IR is a new method for capturing, collecting, managing, disseminating, and preserving scholarlyworks created in digital form by an institution. Therefore, need arises to develop an institutional repository (IR) tomaintain the information on publications in an organized and accessible manner. The existing software tools forpublications information management are not well suited for evaluation purpose, particularly for agricultureresearch with interdisciplinary aspects. We implemented a prototype web based institutional repository for thedocumentation of research publications and evaluation of performance. This prototype, which supports a widerange of publication types, is designed by implementing MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture to meet thespecific requirements of agricultural research institutions and has features like advanced search option, extractionof publications statistics based on a variety of visual form based queries, etc. System developed using open sourcetechnology LAMP allows to the researchers or users to access and enters the publication data in the databasethemselves. Public search facility has also been provided for searching records, dynamic browsing of publicationlists and exporting the contents to various formats for creation of reports. This prototype can serve as a versatiletool for monitoring progress and facilitating evaluation of research quality at the individual and institutionallevels in term of publications output. Most importantly system is very useful for the students pursuing post graduateand doctoral study, to search institute publications of their research interest.Key words: Research Publications; Research evaluation; Web-based information; MVC; LAMP system;

In all scientific and academic research, publicationsare the most important form of communication ofresearch. The scientific work of the researchers orresearch institutes is generally assessed by the qualityof resulting research publications. To evaluate aresearcher, research group or an institution, it is importantto maintain a database of research publications.Therefore, need arises to develop institutional repositoryfor maintaining information on publications in anorganized and accessible manner. An InstitutionalRepository (IR) is a new method for capturing, collecting,managing, disseminating, and preserving scholarly workscreated in digital form by the constituent members of

an institution (Chang, 2003). The Indian Council ofAgricultural Research (ICAR) is one of the largestNational Agricultural Research Systems (NARS)worldwide involved in agriculture research, educationand extension having 5 deemed to university and nearly100 institutes dedicated to different aspects ofagricultural research (ICAR, 2014). Having the vastnetwork of research facilities and the scientists workingin diverse disciplines, it is necessary for ICAR to developa publication database for monitoring and evaluating thequality of the research outputs through an objectiveassessment of the research publications.

The existing software tools for information

2 Indian Res. J. Ext. Edu. 16 (3), September 2016

management of publications are not well suited forevaluation purpose, particularly for agriculture researchwith interdisciplinary aspects. In some scientific andacademic areas, there are publication databases thatcover their respective areas (Poruban et al., 2005;Riedling, K., 2012). Furthermore, these publicationdatabases usually permit search for publications of aparticular author, but do not have provisions forextracting complete publication statistics of scientistsor institute for the purpose of evaluation of performance.In agriculture sciences with interdisciplinary aspects,publication information systems which may beappropriate for a comprehensive evaluation of particularscientists or research team or institute are not readilyavailable. Keeping in view this, an exercise to developan Institutional Repository (IR) for maintaining,monitoring and evaluating the research communicationoutput from the Directorate of Rapeseed-MustardResearch (DRMR), which is mandated with theresearch and development of rapeseed-mustard cropin India, and is one of the constituent institutes of ICAR.

Since, the research publications are one of theimportant indicators of evaluation of quality researchand attract the research collaboration; therefore, toevaluate a researcher, research group or an institution,it is important to maintain a database of researchpublications and communications. After inception ofDRMR, quality research have been made and publishedin national and international repute journals. The volumeof research publication at DRMR is increasing andinformation of research publication available at isscattered and not ready accessible for evaluationpurpose. In response to fulfill the need of an intelligentpublication information system to evaluate individualscientists or research teams at the institute level, DRMRdecided to develop custom-designed online publicationinformation system for the research institute to organizeand maintain the information of publication and serveas an evaluation tool for publication outputs, throughproviding a powerful attribute-based search capability.The overall objective to develop this repository was toenhance the ability of the DRMR to manage all researchpublications of the scientists and generate theinformation for evaluation. The system developedsupports a wide range of publication types and isdesigned by implementing MVC (Model-View-

Controller) architecture to meet the specificrequirements of agricultural research institutions havingthe features like advanced search option, extraction ofpublications statistics based on a variety of form basedqueries. The benefits of MVC architecture have theseparation between model and view allows multipleviews to use the same model. Consequently, anapplication’s model components are easier to implement,test, and maintain, since all access to the model goesthrough these components (Balani, 2002). Metadataformats suitable for describing agricultural scientific andresearch publications have been used in creating thedatabase (Semik et al., 2012).

This system was developed by using open sourcetechnology LAMP that allows the researchers or usersto access and enters the publication data in the databasethemselves. With maximum of versatility in mind, IRwas designed with functions to enter and displaypublication data, search the database for text in certainfields or in the entire entries, create publication lists,and calculate statistics data. It also reduces the timesignificantly needed for answering specific questionsrelated to publications of an author or institution and therepository is named as DRMRPubInfo. Though,DRMRPubInfo is a prototype system developed for asingle institution, the system can be implemented forany agricultural research organization for managementof publication information and research evaluation.

METHODOLOGYThe design of a publication information system has

to take into account two possible requirements, thecompleteness of the data held in the database, and easeof use for the intended users. Information in the databasehas to be as comprehensive and detailed as possible toallow for all conceivable queries. The system shouldalso be capable of handling queries which requiresprocessing of information related to the type and qualityof the publication (Karl, R. and Siegfried, S., 2006).System design and development usually proceedsthrough several phases of software development lifecycle (SDLC) that includes feasibility study (problemidentification), requirement analysis (user ’srequirements), system design, testing, implementationand evaluation (Kumar et al., 2008). In general, usersare not aware with, what to request and what really


may facilitate and simplify their work. The success orthe failure of a software system depends mostly on itsutilization. If the software doesn’t help and facilitateuser’s work and complicated or time-consuming forthem, then they will never use it. Therefore, the correctdefinition of functional requirements is essential.Following this concept, the discussion sessions wereorganized with the possible users of the system i.e.personnel involved in publication informationmanagement, researchers and administrators at theDRMR, Bharatpur to find out their requirement. Afteracquiring and collecting the necessary requiredinformation from the users, structuring the informationand defining what really will facilitate the work of eachof them were needed. In figure 1, a use case diagramof the system is depicted.MVC (Model-View-Controller) design architecture:The system designed using MVC (Model-View-Controller) design architecture which is very useful forarchitecting interactive web based applications (Leff,A. and Rayfield, J.T., 2001; MVC, 2013). MVCencapsulate data along with its processing (model) andisolate it from the process of manipulation (controller)and presentation (look/view) to be represented on theUser Interface. MVC follows the most common

approach of Layering. Layering is nothing but a logicalsplit up of our code in to functions in different classes.This approach is well known and most acceptedapproach. The main advantage in this approach is re-usability of code and easier to maintain and develop aswell as to further upgrade with new features in the future(Satish, 2004). In the process of developingDRMRPubinfo, each layer in the architectural of MVC(Model-View-Controller) have been implementeddifferently such as MySQL database which serves as amodel, HTML, Java Script used for the userinterface(view), and PHP web service as a controller.PHP is a powerful language to develop dynamic andinteractive web applications. One of the defining featuresof PHP is the ease for developers to connect andmanipulate a database. PHP prepares the functions fordatabase manipulation. However, database managementis done by the Structure Query Language (SQL).

The resulting system architecture designed todevelop an efficient research publication informationsystem that has been built using the implementation ofthe MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern ispresented in fig.2

The model means the business logic of the applicationand is the core of the application (Li et al., 2006).

Fig.1- Use case diagram of the system Fig.2- MVC (Model-View-Controller) design architectureof the system


The common classes in the model are: connect DB,insert, update, delete, select, etc. These classes are tobe used for manipulating the database and here MySQLdatabase serves as a model. The view is the userinterface of the controller and is the public face of theuser event’s response (Padilla, A., 2009). Inpublication database, multiple views for differentpurposes are designed and developed with HTML,cascading style sheets (CSS), Javascript, etc. Thecontroller component implements the flow of controlbetween the view and the model (Karam, et al., 2006).It contains code to handle the user actions and invokechanges in the model.Data Model design: Database contains the informationon publications and authors who have written. Multipleauthors may write one publication, and an author canwrite many publications. Authors are publishing differenttype of publications; in this system we distinguish allpublications come out from agricultural research institutesuch as DRMR into 12 different categories. Theseincludes, research paper published in journals,

conference or seminar paper, research thesis, technicalbulletin, extension folder, annual report, book, bookchapter, training manual, popular article, news letter andmagazine. The data actually kept in an entry depend onthe categories of the publication. The publication entityincludes fields, title, abstract, contributing author, journalname, year of publication, volume, issue, pages, publishername, address and doclink of document. The authorentity includes the attributes, author name, discipline,research interest and address. The publicationcategories and simplified representation of ER diagramof the database structure of publication database ispresented in the fig. 3.Publication data : Since its establishment in 1993, theDirectorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research (DRMR)has been conducting multiple research programmes inan effort to improve the rapeseed-mustard crop. Theresearch outcomes have been communicated by thepersonnel of the directorate through differentpublications. The comprehensive list of publicationsunder different categories viz, research papers,

Fig.3- ER diagram and publication categories


conference proceeding, technical bulletins, thesis, etc.were acquired by scanning old institutional publications.Most of these publications were acquired electronicallyfrom the publishers and some of the publications wereavailable as openly accessible documents. Thepublication database contains information about all thepublications related to rapeseed-mustard researchconducted by the researchers of the institute under thecategories listed above. The database contains full-textmaterial of the published publication available inelectronic form wherever possible.Metadata base and schema design : The concept ofmetadata of publication is used in the creation ofdatabase. This will allow filtering and provide enhancedsearch effectiveness within the database. Publicationmetadata elements provide standard information aboutthe research publication. The most commonly usedmetadata formats and thesauri suitable for describingscientific communications in the agriculture domaininclude the Dublin Core (DC), Metadata ObjectDescription Schema (MODS), Virtual Open AccessAgriculture and Aquaculture Repository MetadataApplication Profile (VOA3R AP) and the AGROVOCthesaurus. The DRMRPubinfo system uses the VOA3R

Metadata Application Profile integrated with DC andAGROVOC thesaurus (Semik et al., 2012), which isone of the most suitable and viable metadata formatsfor content description in agriculture. Figure 4 presentsthe metadata schema designed using MYSQL foreffective management and retrieval of researchpublication. Data parameters to be indexed along witheach publication are: ID, title, authors, journal name,publication year, volume, issue, page numbers, etc.User interface and system implementation strategies:User interface was designed keeping in view the threetypes of users which includes simple user, authors andadministrator. The page diagram of system for userinterface has been presented in fig.5, where simple userscan only go through the solid lines while authors andadministrators can go through both solid and dashed lines.A user-friendly interface for the system has beendeveloped by suitably designed GUI. The system hasbeen designed to provide metadata-based filtering tofacilitate appending, editing, browsing and searching.

DRMRPubinfo is implemented using Model ViewController (MVC) architecture and the open sourcetechnology LAMP (Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP).MySQL database was used for back end data storage,

Fig.4- Metadata and schema design


and required tables were created.For describing implementation of Model View

Controller (MVC) architecture in the developed system,the part of codes have been presented in illustrations.The MVC architecture is implemented in everyapplication module. Every module has one model, onecontroller and some view. The model consists of at leastone file which is responsible for accessing the data intothe database. Fig 6 is a sample source of model.

A controller consists of three types of files. The firstfile is to handle user responses, the second file is to handle

feedback and the other file is to connect with the model,the controller user responses handling shown in fig 7.

A View is responsible for displaying the informationinto a graphical interface. One view must have onecontroller that handles requests from users andfeedback. Fig.8 is an example of the view:

The interface has been developed in “English”language with a view to provide global access to thesystem. The hardware specifications include high endservers and storages devices. The system operates insharing mode on a server running Linux kernel 2.6.18-

Fig.6 The code for model

Fig.7 The code for Controller Fig.8 The code for Controller

Fig. 5- User interface diagram of the system


194 operating system, MySQL version 5.1.56, Apache2.2.21 and PHP version 5.1.17.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONDRMRPubinfo is the DRMR’s system for

managing research publications. The system canmaintain details of all publications about the researchcarried out at the DRMR and provides information todifferent stakeholders both within and outside thecountry. The system is used to populate author pageswith publication details and provides quantitative andqualitative information on publications for evaluation ofperformance of researchers. The DRMPubinfo is aninteractive user-friendly system that allows users toperform record searches, insertions, updates anddeletions conveniently without any specialized trainingor knowledge of Structured Query Language (SQL).The users using the system are divided in three classes.The first one contains the users with administrativeprivileges, called ‘Administrators’ who have theresponsibility of maintaining the whole system throughthe addition, deletion or modification of the publicationrecords. The second class contains the ‘Authors’ whois only be able to modify aspects of their previous addedpublications. Finally the third user class consists of‘Simple users’ who have only read privileges. Readprivileges have also been granted to all users. Theapplication is mostly benefit ‘Administrators’ and‘Authors’ classes by making their job easier throughthe use of the system facilities. It is obvious howeverthat a well maintained and up to date system will alsobenefit ‘Simple users’ as they will always be keptinformed with fresh information. Manager of researchinstitute even being simple user be able to evaluate theperformance of institute or individual researcher so-called ‘Authors’ in term of publication output.

The system offers significant saving of digital spaceand requires lesser time for updating and managementof digital research publication information. Theintegration of the capabilities to add new publication,search, browse, export, generate statistical reports andto e-mail selected publication makes the system aversatile tool for research evaluation and monitoring.Besides the system administrator, each scientificpersonnel are provided with a login account to add theirown publications to the DRMPubinfo database. Figure6 is a sample screen-shot of user interface.

IUD records operation : The potential use of the systemfor maintaining publication data and researcher i.e.author evaluation purpose mandates that the recordoperations; INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE (IUD)must be performed in a secure manner. For securetransaction of records, the system operates inadministrator and user mode. After login as administratorthe insert, update and delete of records can beperformed. After successful login, system populates theonly results that relate to the author and enable to modifyrecords. Figure 6 shows a screen-shot of the interfacefor inserting and updating new records of publication tothe database. There may be multiple authors belong toa publication, therefore before adding new publicationrecord, the system checks for the duplicity of recordsin database. To avoid typographic errors, the systemprovides a dropdown menu option for selecting differentattributes.Search features of the system : This is the main featureof every publication information management system.The system provides a powerful facility to search thepublications within the database. There are three primarymethods of searching for publications in DRMRPubinfo:(1) Browsing by publication categories, (2) Keywordbased search, and (3) Advanced search based ondifferent attributes (Fig.9).Browsing publication categories : Publications in thedatabase have been organized into different categoriessuch as research paper, abstract, conference proceedingspaper, edited book, book chapter, research report/notes,technical bulletins, newsletters, edited conferenceproceedings, training manuals, etc. In category searchthe system provides complete information of thepublication published by the institute in the category.Besides these, it also gives the counts of publicationsavailable in database for a category (Fig.9).Keyword-based search: DRMRPubinfo hascomprehensive information of publications includingbooks, monographs, research papers, discussion papers,conference proceedings, technical bulletins, etc thatreflect the research interests of the institute. Retrievinginformation on a specific publication is usually time-consuming since the users have to browse the entireinformation of a category in publication database. Toovercome this limitation, the software provides akeyword search facility. In keyword search the wholedatabase can be searched for specific keywords and


the list of publication that matches the keywords isdisplayed (Fig.9). It also provides the list of importantkeywords and automatically enters the keywords forbetter search results.Advanced search options : The database uses thirdparty publication quality evaluation data for enablingsearch based on quality parameters under advancedsearch option. The National Academy of AgricultureSciences (NAAS) evaluates research journals relatedto agricultural research and provides a rating which is awidely recognized rating index in India. The journalshaving the Thompson Reuters Impact factors areassigned a rating between 6.0 and 10.0 based on theirstanding in Thompson Reuters Impact factor listpublished yearly. The journals which are not availablein Thompson Reuters Impact factor list are assigned arating between 1.0 and 5.9 (NAAS, 2013). Theintegration of rating parameter in the database allowscertain complex searches and provides more controlover the quality and relevance of the results. Theadvanced search option is designed for users who wishto specify exact search criteria to search the publicationin database on user-specified attributes. In addition tolisting only publication detail specific to that individualauthor, it provides the faculty member’s educational

degree, discipline, research interest and contactinformation. Most preferred advance search optionsprovided by the system are presented in the Fig.9.Publication statistics : An important feature of thesystem is to generate customized dynamic statistics ofpublications which can be utilized for report generation,performance evaluation and monitoring of researchpublications, institutions and individuals. For evaluationof a researcher, system provides statistics such asnumber of different publications published by author,even of research papers published in different impactfactors rating journals. Statistical of publicationsgenerated dynamically as and when query made anddepending upon query, therefore it has not been storedin the database. Coding has been done for presentationof statistical data. For graphical presentation of data, GoogleChart API was integrated into the software. Google’s ChartAPI is a tool that allows embedding dynamic charts andgraphs to enhance interactivity (Google Inc. 2012). Inthis way, summary of publication statistics for DRMR canalso be generated in graphical form.

CONCLUSIONThe potential uses of Institutional Repositories

content in other digital environment are countless.

Fig.9- A sample screen-shot provides the user interface


Institutional Repositories content does not need to ‘sit’in the Institutional Repositories only. It should be broughtinto new digital environments where it can be easilyconsulted, represented and integrated with other currentresearch extension and educational activities. TheDRMRPubinfo is a web based application aimed atfacilitating the management of large collection ofresearch publications, by implementing automatedorganization techniques, powerful but concise interfacemethods and optimized data handling. The user interfaceprovides several means for browsing, navigating,searching, filtering and exporting publicationsinformation. MVC (Model-View-Controller) designpattern using LAMP technologies were selected as an

implementation platform for the system. DRMPubinfodatabase contains comprehensive coverage of DRMR’sresearch/technical publications dating back to theinception of institute in 1993. Although a formalassessment of the system has not been done, informalfeedback shows very positive reviews by DRMRlibrarians, researchers or authors, and administrators dueto effective management and the easy user interface.There exists sufficient inbuilt flexibility in this publicationssystem so that it can be adapted by other agriculturalresearch organizations specially other ICAR institutes.Further refinement and augmentation of the capabilitiesof the application in response to user feedback isimportant to enhance the quality of the software.

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