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ABSTRACT

Student Management System deals with all kind of student details, academic

related reports, college details, course details, curriculum, batch details and other

resource related details too. It tracks all the details of a student from the day one to

the end of his course which can be used for all reporting purpose, tracking of

attendance, progress in the course, completed semesters years, coming semester

year curriculum details, exam details, project or any other assignment details, final

exam result; and all these will be available for future references too.

Our program will have the databases of Courses offered by the college under

all levels of graduation or main streams, teacher or faculty's details, batch

execution details, students' details in all aspects.This program can facilitate us

explore all the activities happening in the college, even we can get to know which

teacher / faculty is assigned to which batch, the current status of a batch,

attendance percentage of a batch and upcoming requirements of a batch.

Different reports and Queries can be generated based of vast options related

to students, batch, course, teacher / faculty, exams, semesters, certification and

even for the entire college.

The main objective of using this management tool is for academic institutions

range from schools and colleges to simplify their administrative process involving

personnel management, inventory and payments.


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The additional feature which is added in this tool is messaging services like

SMS & E-mail which means tool can able to send messages to parents regarding

students activities and school events. This system eases the process of tracking a

record with its in built search option. For each and every organization, Business

Process Reengineering (BPR) is important because BPR is a management

approach aiming at improvements by means of elevating efficiency and

effectiveness of the processes that exist within and across organizations.

The key to BPR is for organizations to look at their business processes from a

"clean slate" perspective and determine how they can best construct these

processes to improve how they conduct business and business process change

management. So ARMS is designed and developed in the way to ensure the BPR is

very much possible in the future requirements and transformations.

Our ARMS also provides proper solutions and reports for the top management

for taking proper decisions and policies for Business process redesign and Business

Transformations.ARMS also reduces the work load of the End users by eliminating

the data-entry work while preparing reports for the top management.

ARMS is developed by using the Microsoft .NET platform so it provides high

end security and user friendly environment for the users and provides great control

over the system for the administrators.

1.1 IntroductionThis Chapter will introduce the project, outlining the background to the problem and the scope of the

project. Finally, Section 1.4 presents an outline of the project report. Term definitions needed to

understand this report, are given in the Project Glossary, in Appendix C, Page 97.


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INTRODUCTION

About the project

The student management system is an automated version of manual Student

Management System. It can handle all details about a student. The details include

college details, subject details, student personnel details, academic details, exam

details etc...

In case of manual system they need a lot of time, manpower etc. Here almost

all work is computerized. So the accuracy is maintained. Maintaining backup is

very easy. It can do with in a few minutes.

Our system has two type of accessing modes, administrator and user.

Student management system is managed by an administrator. It is the job of the

administrator to insert update and monitor the whole process.

When a user log in to the system. He would only view details of the student.He can't perform any changes.


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A. BACKGROUNDThe Naval Postgraduate School Alumni Association has been in existence for

a number of years but has not been able to become a viable entity. The

Association's goal is to provide a professional network for the graduates of the

Naval Postgraduate School. The Alumni Association is independent of the school

in funding and administrative support. The Association administration is run

through the efforts of volunteers and part-time hires.

The inability of the association to become a viable entity can be attributed to a

few major factors. First, the fluctuation in the work force effort and the lack of

consistent commitment to the Association have caused inefficient and misguided

efforts. The second major factor effecting the viability of the Alumni Association

is the lack of an accurate and homogeneous database of the school's alumni.

Alumni records over the history of the school have been maintained in a variety of

methods. Once the student had graduated the records were archived, thus making

access to these records difficult and time consuming.The new Alumni Association President decided that the Association should

use the resources available to it and have a computerized database management

system developed to handle the data requirements of the Association. The basic

requirements for the system included the storing of Alumni data for quick and

efficient retrieval, which would also provide mechanisms for the updating of the

stored data. Additionally, the system would be required to automate and perform

the routine accounting and billing functions necessary to maintain the membership

records of the Association. This thesis accomplishes these requirements andincludes an in depth overview of the software application's analysis, design, and

implementation.

1.2 Background to the ProblemSaint Michael's College is a small college offering subjects in GCSE-1, GCSE-2, Alevel-1 and

Alevel-2 standards. The student intake is always international, with students coming from all around

the world. The average number of students attending the college in one year is 130 students. The

college also corresponds with Agents, which are companies independent of the college who are

situated around the world. They advertise the college in their own country and send the students they

have signed up to the college for education. They get a commission for every student they send. There

are approximately 1000 agents which the college is in contact with, this varies little as some agents

become out of contact and new agents contact the college in approximately equal numbers.

While the students attend the college they are accommodated either with a Host Family or in

Residential Accommodation. Host families are local people (not necessarily families) who are paid a

small amount of money to take care of the students while residential accommodation are halls located

within the college grounds. There are approximately 100 host families in contact with the college,

again, this changes little as people decide to leave their roles as host families and others offer to

become host families in approximately equal numbers.


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Currently, three administrative staff deal with all Student, StudentEnrolment, Arrival/Departure,

Agent,Host Family and Classing Details. The staff are the main stakeholders affected by thisdevelopment and are described in theBusiness Vision in Appendix C, Page 58. Presently, Student,

Student Enrolment, Arrival/Departure and Host Family and Agent details are stored on paper in sevendifferent filing cabinets. The Student, StudentEnrolment (including subjects taken and enrolment

documentation received) and Arrival/Departure (flights in and out of the country) details are

contained within one filing cabinet. The records are ordered by country rather than 'Student Name',with many students being placed in one file based on the country they are from. The remaining filing

cabinets contain all the Agent Details, which are also ordered by country rather than Trading Name.

Many agent records are stored in one paper file based on the country they belong to.Chapter 1Introduction to the Project A Database for an International College

2The Host Family records are stored alphabetically on 'Family Name'. These only occupy two drawers

of a filing cabinet. Classing Details, recording information on college classes, such as, course title and

start date are stored in one box file in no particular order.

Agent records are often incomplete because emails and other correspondence are simply 'thrown' into

the files with little regard to whether all the details, such as, a telephone number have been recorded.

Also, the staff have no means of recording an Agent or Host Familys Status (see Project Glossary,Appendix C, Page 97) because this factor changes often within the school year and would involve

constantly amending the files, making them incoherent.

Searching for a record based on Student Name or Agent Trading Name is impossible as a country

must be known before a search can be conducted and even if the country is known, searching through

a large unordered file for one record is extremely time-consuming. Searching is less of an issue forClassing and Host Family Details because there are considerably less records to search through.

However, searching it is still inefficient for Host Family if the Family Name of the Host Family

cannot be recalled.

Duplication of data is frequent because records are very unorganised and are not searched through todetermine whether a record has previously been stored. Also, details are often scribbled on pieces of

paper for filing later and are lost before they can be filed or are filed twice because the staff membercannot recall whether they have been filed.

These problems prompted the college to consider buying an off-the-shelf package,Infospeed Class for

Windows, to provide a database-based replacement for their paper-based system. However, this

package cost almost 3,000 [Infospeed, 2001] and could not be afforded by the college due to its

limited budget. Therefore, I have been asked if I could produce some type of system, which wouldsolve the above problems for less of the cost. Due to the limited time available to complete this

project, the staff were asked to indicate their minimum requirements for the system. These were listed

as Agent, Student and Student EnrolmentDetails with the possibility of implementing the Host

Family,Arrival/Departure and Classing Details later if time allows. The Classing Details were stated

as not so important to implement because of the small number of records held on them, so this will be

implemented last if time allows. These requirements, including priority ordering, are discussed fullyin Chapter 3. The new system will be implemented as a PC-based standalone solution because the

staff share one office and would prefer the database to be held on their shared PC which is the fastestand most reliable in the office. Hardware components are discussed in Section 3.3.3.

31.3 Scope of the ProjectThis project will produce a solution that will be used only by the college administrative staff. The

solution is intended to be a fully working database that will actually be used to store and allow


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searches on all records more efficiently than the current system. Other functions within the college,

such as, financing will not be implemented because the time available to complete the developmentcannot accommodate these additions.

1.4 Project Report OutlineThe remainder of the report is divided into six chapters. This section briefly outlines the content of

each chapter.

Chapter 2Introduces the issues that must be addressed by the project, including the selection of a

software development methodology and the Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI) issues important tothe user interfacedesign.

Chapter 3Details the analysis of the current system, the requirements gathered for the proposed

database and the choice of software tool to design the database in. Evaluation criteria are also

included in this chapter, which will be used to assess the quality of the database in Chapter 6.

Chapter 4Describes the design of the proposed database, including how database design theorywas applied and how HCI issues were used to design the user interface.

Chapter 5 Describes the implementation of the database, outlining how the ImplementationWorkflow of the RUP was followed and how Microsoft Access 2000 was used to physically create

the database.

Chapter 6Details the testing and evaluation of the database. It also outlines the deployment of the

database.

Chapter 7Concludes the project by evaluating the project against the project requirements outlined

in the Summary. The chapter also outlines the possibilities for Further Enhancements to the database.Chapter 2Background Research A Database for an International College

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Chapter 2 Background Research

2.1 Selection of a Software Development MethodologyIt is essential that the project follows a Software Development Methodology to improve the

development process by ensuring effective project monitoring and accurate requirements gathering. A

Software Development Methodology can be described as:

"A collection of philosophies, procedures, techniques, tools, and documentation which aid the systems

developer with the implementation of a new information system".[Avison and Fitzgerald, 1995, p.13]

Thus before the analysis stage can begin, a methodology must be chosen from the many available.

Three popular methodologies, the Traditional System Development Life Cycle (SDLC), RapidApplication Development (RAD) and Rational Unified Process (RUP) have been compared to

ascertain the methodology most appropriate for this project.

The System Development Life Cycle methodology has serious limitations. It is inflexible, assuming


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that all requirements can be gathered at the start of the development and will remain static. Changes to

requirements are inevitable and using this methodology, would usually necessitate a very large changeto the database design and implementation [Avison and Fitzgerald, 1995, p.32]. This would be

disastrous given the limited time available for this development. The methodology only involves usersbriefly at the beginning of the development process, often resulting in rejection of the system because

it fails to meet user requirements. Finally, the documentation produced in the SDLC is

computerorientedand does not allow easy communication between developer and user, again resulting in a

system that may fail to meet user requirements [Avison and Fitzgerald, 1995, p.30]. It was therefore

rejected as inappropriate for this development.

Rapid Application Development was considered as a potential methodology because its objective is to

speed up the development process, which is attractive given the time constraints. However, its

emphasis on involving users inJoint Application Development (JAD) workshops and on constantly

releasingprototypes to the users [Tudor and Tudor, 1995, p.268] is impractical in this developmentbecause of the geographical distance between the developer and the college. RAD is also not a

replacement for more structured methodologies and must be used in conjunction with, the SDLC, forexample, to ensure that the development is managed properly [Tudor and Tudor, 1995, p.269].Chapter 2Background Research A Database for an International College

5The Rational Unified Process is a fairly new methodology that has been recommended for this project

by Owen Johnson, a Leeds University Information Systems lecturer. It is based on software best

practices, which are:

1) Develop software iteratively and incrementally2) Manage requirements

3) Use component-based architectures

4) Visually model software

5) Continuously verify software quality

6) Control changes to software[Johnson, 2000]

Point four ensures that the developer can communicate unambiguously with the users regarding the

development [Krutchen, 2000, p.11], something that the SDLC does not do well. The other best

practices reduce the problem of changing requirements, which is overlooked by the SDLCmethodology. The changing requirements are managed rather than ignored and the development is

created iteratively using component-based architecture, ensures that the changes only effect part of the

development. This is opposed to the SDLC where changes are only dealt with at the end of thedevelopment, usually resulting in major modifications to the whole database.

The whole process encourages user feedback so that the 'real' user requirements are gathered. It alsopromotes iterative testing so that errors are detected early when they can be resolved without major

changes to the database. Thus this methodology has many benefits. Given the time constraints and

inexperience of the developer, developing the software in small components, is advantageous as itensures that the database is as error-free as possible and makes the task of creating the whole database

less daunting. Thus the RUP has been chosen as the software development methodology to follow forthis project. The RUP is described in the following section.

2.2 Following the Rational Unified Process (RUP)The RUP consists of three components, iterations,phases and workflows. The number of iterations a

development will go through depends on its size. Iterations allow the developer to take into accountthe changing requirements [Krutchen, 2000, p.23]. The changing requirements for this development


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are documented in the Change Request Document in Appendix C, Page 90. The phases, Inception,

Elaboration, Construction and Transition simply refer to the stage the development is at. TheBusiness and Requirements Workflows being largely done in the Inception phase of development

while the Implementation Workflow is mainly completed in the Construction Phase. However, eachworkflow does not have a specific phase assigned to it because, for example, the requirementsChapter 2Background Research A Database for an International College

6gathered in the Requirements Workflow often change and must be updated at any phase of the

development.

Finally the purpose of the workflows is to separate the activities and documents (artefacts), of the

RUP into logical stages in the development process [Krutchen, 2000, p.43]. There are nine workflows

in total, six core workflows:Business,Requirements,AnalysisandDesign,Implementation, Testand

Deployment, and three supporting workflows: Configuration and Change Management, Project

Management andEnvironment Workflow. Each of the workflows produces artefacts, which are the

documents and diagrams that aid the development process. Each of the workflows, and artefacts

created during them, will be described in the chapters to which they relate, with the Project

Management Workflow being described in Appendix B, Page 55. The Environment Workflow simply

involves assessing the current environment (the college) and selecting the most appropriate tools tocreate the product. The assessment of the environment can be found in Section 1.2 and the selection of

the tool most appropriate to this development is discussed in Section 3.6.

The RUP should be tailored to meet the individual needs of a project [RUP, 2002]. Since the scope of

this development and the part of the college being analysed is fairly small, many of the artefacts are

irrelevant and have not been created. There are too many artefacts within the RUP to list those thathave been ignored, however, the artefacts that have been produced during this development are those

that are essential to improving the development process.

2.3 Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) IssuesTo fulfil the project's aim of creating a working database for the college means ensuring that thedatabase is actually usable. This involves creating a User Interface to ensure the database looks

professional and can be easily used by the college staff. To create a user interface that is more 'userfriendly',appropriate Human-Computer Interaction issues must be applied. Human-Computer

Interaction is the study of the way in which humans operate computers that has the specific goal of

ensuring that more usable systems are developed [Kirakowski, 1988, p.5]. Scholars of HCI havecreated some useful guidelines to follow in developing more usable systems based on their research.

These HCI issues and guidelines have been researched to establish which are most appropriate to this

database development. The results of this investigation and their application to the databasedevelopment are fully discussed in the Section 4.7.

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