Reservation System for the Library - Assignment Example

Literature Review: Reservation System for the Library Faculty Table of Contents I. Introduction II. Problem Definition and Scope III. Database Design Analysis IV. Methodology V. Modelling Tools and Languages VI. Technology VII. Conclusion VIII. Bibliography I. Introduction Library is a place which is used by every student, researchers, teachers and other users for gaining knowledge depending upon the subject and their desire for information. The reservation system for books is a part of any library and it can be online or manually. This paper will be focussed on local library which do not have a database reservation system for the public to use and which they can have access to at home. The purpose of this reservation system is that students, teachers and the housebound can gain a better service of the library and they can take their time to search for a particular book they want whether it is for coursework or for teaching purposes. This system will be useful, efficient and user-friendly. In this reservation system user have an option either to search by title, author, publication or class (subject). This will be achieved by creating a simple reservation system for local library by using Microsoft Access to produce a database. This work will be useful to other students who might be creating a database on a particular subject, as they will be able to gain ideas from the database that will be created. In this paper following sections will cover the topic as problem definition and scope, database design analysis, methodology, modelling tools and language and technology which can be used for reservation system. II. Problem Definition and Scope Problem Domain: Local library do not have any proper database for book reservation so they are facing problem. Target Group: The reservation system targets the user from different domains such as students, teachers and housebound (general user). Proposed Solution: The proposed solution is a database for the reservation system for library. Scope: This database system will be used by librarian to manage books, article and also to keep track of borrowed books and any fines for late return of the books. The user can use this system for the purpose of online reservation when it will be integrated with any web interface technology. So this will eliminate the procedure of traditional reservation (manually) that is employed by library. III. Database Design Analysis Database Design: Database design refers to the tables, columns, relationships, keys and indices of which a database is comprised. The process of designing a database begins with an analysis of the business requirements that must be met. It is the process of producing a detailed data model of a database. This model contains all the needed physical design choices and physical storage parameters needed to generate DDL1 which can then be used to create a database. A fully attributed data model contains detailed attributes for each entity. An Overview Database Design Process: According to Davidson (2001), the process of designing a proper database system has a few things in common with designing an efficient computer system of any kind. It is a relatively straightforward task. It can be very time consuming. It seldom is done with the kind of vigour that is required. (Davidson 2001, p. 21) According to Davidson (2001), the process of designing any database can be broken down into a few steps, they are Defining Objectives: Functional performance and reporting requirements for the final system to be created is defined. Logical Design: It is a process of designing a logical path to achieve the objectives, done in an implementation, and an independent way. Here SQL2 will be not referenced much because logical database design is independent of physical database design and implementation. Physical Design: It is the process of adaptation of logical design into a real implementation. Physical design phase is concerned with determining how the database system will be physically implemented; using whatever hardware and software is available to us. Physical Implementation: Physical implementation phase of the project is concerned with actually laying out the physical data onto database servers and developing code to access the data. Review: Review is the process of accessing whether the objectives are achieved. This is the most overlooked part of a project. It takes too long, for testing, documentation, and all of the other things. This should include a mechanism to utilize user feedback, and a maintenance plan to consider how to rectify any problem identified. (Davidson 2001, p. 22) Information Analysis for Database Design: On the basis of the Project Proposal Report there are a few questions that may appear, which helped the designer to identify the focus areas that is needed to be covered :- What form of data transaction will take place? Data in the form of user information, books information, reservation and tracking of books, etc. will be used through this reservation system for library database. Who will use the data? Administrator (Librarian): - who will manage the database. Users:-The types of user are students, teachers and housebound (general user). How will the data be used? The data will be used for book search based on title, author, publication, subject, the level and duration of users membership, the access privileges, email notifications, reservation status, etc. These searches will be done for reservation of particular books that is required by the users. What will be the format and content of reports? The reports are generated for borrowed books and late fines by users. It will be done by the Librarian and returned to the particular user. Where is the data now? At present the data mainly resides in different systems, spreadsheets, files etc. How will the database interact with other existing systems? The data in reservation system for library database will interact with the data that will stay in its original format. This may include building intricate gateway connection to mainframes, linked server connections to other SQL servers or Oracle boxes, Access or other spreadsheets. IV. Methodology There are various methods available on the basis of any software can be developed, some model are described below: The Waterfall Model: The waterfall method attempts to pin down the requirements early in the project life cycle. After gathering requirements, software design is performed in full. Once the design is complete, the software is implemented. The problem with this method is that if a change in requirements occurs, the impact can be devastating. The Agile Model: Agile methods use iterations in extremely short bursts and attempt to minimize risk by always having a working system of expanding capabilities. Agile methods emphasize using UML as a sketch. The RAD Model: Rapid application development (RAD) is an incremental software development process model. RAD emphasizes an extremely short development cycle. The RAD model is a “high-speed” adaptation of the waterfall model in which rapid development is achieved by using component-based construction. If requirements are well understood and project scope is constrained, the RAD process enables a development team to create a “fully functional system” within very short time periods The Prototyping Model: A prototype is a working model that is functionally equivalent to a component of the product. In many instances the client only has a general view of what is expected from the software product. In such a scenario where there is an absence of detailed information regarding the input to the system, the processing needs and output requirements, the prototyping model may be employed. This model reflects an attempt to increase the flexibility of the development process by allowing the client to interact and experiment with a working representation of the product. The developmental process only continues once the client is satisfied with the functioning of the prototype. At that stage the developer determines the specifications of the client’s real needs. There are various advantages of prototyping model. Some of them are faster development and easier for end user to understand because of involvement, fewer changes needed after implementation and user knows what to expect at implementation, user requirement is easier to determined as there is always communication occurs between user and developer(analyst), and development cost reduces . Some of the disadvantages of prototype model are that often clients expect that a few minor changes to the prototype will more than suffice their needs and fail to realize that no consideration was given to the overall quality of the software in the rush to develop the prototype, the developers may lose focus on the real purpose of the prototype and compromise the quality of the product. According to Powel (2006), there are various methodologies available for designing database models. Each of these different approaches consists of a number of steps. These separate steps are interchangeable, repeatable, and iterative. The following sequence of steps to database model design seems the most sensible and will be used for designing the reservation system for library database along with the use of prototype model. Requirements analysis: It is the first phase in which information about the nature of the data, features required, and any specialized needs will be covered. This will be done talking to librarian and users to get a better idea of exactly what they need. Conceptual design: This part will be done with the help of graphical tools (for example Rational Rose.) for making Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs). This step includes creation of tables, fields within those tables, and relationships between the tables. Logical design: Create database language commands to generate table definitions. Physical design: Adjust database language commands to alter the database model for the underlying physical attributes of tables. Tuning Phase: Tuning phase includes appropriate indexing, further normalization, or even denormalization and security features. (Powel 2006, p.20) V. Modelling Tools and Languages UML: The Unified Modelling Language (UML) is the standard modelling language for software and systems development. The underlying premise of UML is that no one diagram can capture the different elements of a system in its entirety. Hence, UML is made up of nine diagrams that can be used to model a system at different points of time in the software life cycle of a system. These diagrams fall in various categories, mainly static, dynamic and Implementation and are given below. Static: Use Case and Class diagram. Dynamic: Object, State, Activity, Sequence and Collaboration diagram. Implementation: Component and Deployment diagram. (Chitnis, Tiwari, & Ananthamurthy 2006) Philippe Kruchten’s 4+1 view model breaks down a model into a set of views, each capturing a specific aspect of system and is shown below. Figure 1: Philippe Kruchtens 4+1 view model Source: (Hamilton & Miles 2006, p. 30) Logical View: A logical view describes the abstract descriptions of a system’s parts and used to model what a system is made up of and how the parts interact with each other. The diagrams provided by UML in this view are class, object, state machine, and interaction diagrams. Process View: A process view describes the processes within the system and is helpful in visualizing what must happen within the system. This view contains activity diagrams. Development View: A development views describes how system’s parts are organized into modules and components and is very useful to manage layers within the systems architecture. This view contains package and component diagrams. Physical View: A physical view describes how the systems design, as described in the three previous views, is brought to life as a set of real-world entities. This view contains deployment diagrams. Use Case View: A use case view describes the functionality of the system being modelled from the perspective of the outside world and is needed to describe what the system is supposed to do. All of the four earlier views rely on the use case view to guide them thats why the model is called 4+1. This view contains use case diagrams, descriptions, and overview diagrams. (Hamilton & Miles 2006, p. 30) Figure 2: A Use Case diagram of Reservation System for Library Rational Rose: Rational Rose3 is a visual modelling tool for UML. It comes in different versions suited to different requirements. Rational Rose also supports the designing of data models within the same environment. An interesting feature of Rational Rose is the ability to publish the UML diagrams as a set of Web pages and images. This enables user to share and distribute their application design where the Rational Rose tool is not installed. (Chitnis, Tiwari, & Ananthamurthy 2006) VI. Technology Different technologies are considered when the analysis is done for the interface (website) and database systems. Today’s main technologies used for website developments are .Net, JSP (Java Server Pages), ASP 2.0 (Active Server Pages), PHP and the RDBMS4 which are used are Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL), Oracle, MySQL and Microsoft Access. For the library reservation system the RDBMS selected is Microsoft Access (2003) and when it will be made online so that user can access it online and make reservation the technology suitable for interface will be ASP.NET because it is generally employed for the web pages. MS Access: Microsoft Access or Microsoft Office Access is a RDBMS from Microsoft and it comes with Microsoft Office Professional packages. It combines the relational Microsoft Jet database engine with graphical user interface which makes it user friendly and is widely used by students, researchers and small business uses. It can use the data stored in Microsoft SQL server, Oracle, MySQL and any ODBC5 compliant data container. Although Microsoft Access supports object oriented but it is not a fully object oriented database. It lacks triggers and stored procedures. Access allows relatively quick development. All database tables, queries, forms, and reports are stored in the database. It can be applied to small projects but scales poorly to larger projects involving multiple concurrent users. One of the benefits of Access from a developer perspective is its relative compatibility with SQ. Queries may be viewed and edited as SQL statements, and SQL statements can be used directly in Macros and VBA (Visual Basic Application) Modules to manipulate Access tables ASP.NET: ASP.NET is web application development technology and used for developing dynamic websites, web application and XML (Extensible Markup Language) web services. ASP.NET is a part of .NET platform and is successor to Active Server pages (ASP) technology. It provides performance benefits over other script-based technologies by compiling the server-side code to one or a few DLL (Dynamic Link Library) files on the web server. This happens transparently in the background the first time a page is requested. Some common development tools used for ASP.NET are Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, Macromedia Dreamweaver 8, Visual Studio.NET (2005) and Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition. VII. Conclusion In conclusion, it can be said as the various analysis, methods, tools and technology discussed in this paper will be useful for developing a database reservation system for the library, which can be used by students, teachers and other user for search and booking of required books. This can be also useful for librarian who can track the books and users. VIII. Bibliography Pressman, R.S. 2001. Software Engineering: A practitioner’s Approach, McGraw Hill, New York. P. 23-47. Booch, G., Rumbaugh, J. & Jacobson, I. 2001. The Unified Modeling Language User Guide, Addison Wesley, New Delhi. P. 3-33 Hamilton, K. & Miles, R. 2006. Learning UML 2.0, OReilly Media, Inc, USA. p. 14-36 Powel, G. 2006. Beginning Database Design, Wiley Publishing, Inc., United States of America. p20. Davidson, L. 2001. Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design. Wrox Press Ltd., United States of America. p. 22-37, Viescas, J.L. 2004. Microsoft Office Access 2003 Inside Out , Microsoft Press, United States of America. Editor: Blanton, A. & Worthwell, A. 2004. Microsoft Office Access 2003 Step By Step, Microsoft Press, United States of America. Evjen, B., Hanselman, S., Muhammad, F., Sivakumar, S., Rader, D. 2006. Professional ASP.NET 2.0, Wiley Publishing, Inc., United States of America. Microsoft Access. Retrieved on January 1, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access ASP.NET. Retrieved on January 1, 2007 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asp.net Chitnis, M., Tiwari, P. & Ananthamurthy, L. 2006. UML Tools. Retrieved on January 1, 2007 from http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/1593811 Chitnis, M., Tiwari, P. & Ananthamurthy, L. 2006. UML Overview. Retrieved on January 1, 2007 from http://www.developer.com/design/article.php/1553851 Read More