Evaluation of Multilanguage Car Rental Website - Research Paper Example

Di Evaluation report Number Data Evaluation report for Multilanguage Car Rental Website The implementation of the web portal system of Multilanguage Car Rental Website at the moment is proving to be a success to both the company and the implementation team. The project team together with the stakeholders have played their roles in ensuring that the implementation of the project is successful within the provided scope of time. The team has not encountered any critical constraints as far as project resources are concerned. However, the speed at which the team responsible for data collection was relatively slow and this can have negative implication on the completion date. Introduction to the project This report will summarize the research that was carried out and methodology used to attain the aim successfully, both as a project team and as an individual. The web portal project involved two parties who created a prototype of the website that was used for testing. This project entails a web-based system that enables customers to view and book a car and facilitate the payment via the internet. The aim of the project is to built, implement and gives an evaluation of the web portal system that will enable the administration to manage the details of the bookings that the client make online. The objective of this project is to give a detailed analysis of the whole product and come up with the most appropriate approaches and skills for the system, to use the techniques in the time of the design and implementation of a Multi-language Car Rental website and recommend the design and implementation schedule and get agreement with the client. Research The project team decided to give more consideration on integrating languages that will ensure that the function and usability requirement of the system is attained as per the client wish. To come up with a integrated website, we saw it necessary to include other .net languages like cascading style sheets JavaScript and jQuery. jQuery JQuery is an open source JavaScript library that simplifies the interactions between Document HTML, or more precisely, the Document Object Model (also known as DOM), JavaScript, (Query Community Experts, 2010). Applications have made these issues a lot of JavaScript code is difficult, resulting in higher maintenance costs. Dubois, J. (2010). jQuery is designed to alleviate all these problems by providing a light weight library that adds a lot of advanced functions and cross-browser to the standard language. In addition, there is a very dynamic community to add more advanced components based on the market. Dubois, J. (2010). It has been used in different ways in the site produced one of it the image roundabout galley that easily converts unordered lists & other nested HTML structures into entertaining and interactive (fredhq.com, n.d.) Moreover from this technology the website took advantage where theY develop other gallery that has a light box which make the image floats overtop of web page (fancybox.net, n.d.). Ajax It is an advanced whose functionality involves a multi user interface and sends a URL query to the server. The web server processes the URL and provides the requested web page that is in form of html. This technique is a derived from the network component of using hypertext to display web pages but since the system has a software that also communicate with the database, then it is a very crucial tool. In addition, the language can support the chat system that is necessary for customer support service by the company. PHP PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor is a server side language. This means that the scenario works on your web server, not on the users browser. PHP is relatively new (compared to languages ​​such as Perl (CGI) and Java), but is quickly becoming one of the most popular programming languages​​on the Internet Nematollahi, A, (2005). Finding the best way to present and develop a multi-language car rental site from sending to database and analyze has been searched. There are many web services and languages used nowadays to exchange data in the internet, most of which are written in PHP format due to its simplicity and consistency. So, it has been stated in (Wollin, L, 2004) that PHP is commonly used to access databases and provide server-side form and e-commerce processing. CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Is a simple mechanism for adding style for example fonts, colors, spacing to Web documents.Using CSS for layout is a highly-recommended technique, and is now a best-practice in the web industry. Using CSS for styling and layout means you have a clear (separation of concerns) between content/structure (usually HTML) and style (CSS). Ultimately, this makes for cleaner, more readable, better maintainable code. JavaScript JavaScript is an object-based scripting language that can be interpreted by most commonly used Web browsers, including Netscape, Navigator, and Internet Explorer. In conjunction with HTML form elements, JavaScript can be used to make flexible and easy-to-use applications that can be accessed by anyone connected to the Internet popular programming language that is supported in all Web browsers and other Web tools. It enables interactive functions to be added to Web pages, which are otherwise static. SEO Search Engine Optimization Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving the visibility of a website in search engines "natural” or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic"), search results. In general, the earlier (or higher ranked on the search results page), and more frequently a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engines users. (Beel, J. 2010). Application Programming Interface (web API) The Google Transliterate API lets websites and programs provide transliteration capabilities. With Google Translate, anyone can dynamically translate text between thousands of language pairs. Methodology SDLC goes through all the phases of developing a system from its initiation to its deployment and maintenance. Thus, the required system was developed smoothly in accordance with the SDLC stages of the waterfall model, all of which are: analysis, design, development, testing, and finally deployment and maintenance. SDLC Software Development Life Cycle This is basically what the team used in developing the system part of the website. Since the portal part of the website need to include the robust features of the system software, then the best way to come up with the most appropriate model is by utilizing the components d SDLC. These are r Requirement analysis phase which entails the software requirement identification and definitions. These include both functional and non-functional requirement. Planning and design phase where the software requirement are turned into a software design by coding and, it entails coming up with the architecture of the system. Both hardware and software are involved plus all the design methodologies such as UML, and also the network requirements. Implementation phase involve coming up with the code or the program that will do what has been planned and design. This is always the most crucial stage and tit needs advanced programmers who can create a program that not only work in simulation but also in real time. Testing and evaluation phase where both unit and system testing is done. Unit testing is where sub systems of the larger system are tested independently before they are integrated to become one big system while system testing involve the testing of the larger system and evaluating its functionality and usability. UML (Unified Modelling Language) In order to help improve communication between developers and customers, the use case diagram, a type of UML, has achieved more in-depth to get the most from its advantages. It is mainly used this type of chart to describe the scenarios of the system, and show what the system will do rather than the way (Kendall, 2010). ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) It has investigated about the importance and value of analyzing and modeling a system. For instance, in order to design ERD, the required system has to be analyzed and broken down into chunks. So, the developer has to go through and visualize all the different aspects the system might include and engage with. Then, the developer would have gained a deep understanding of the system under development by the time the ERD was created (Kendall, 2010) Questionnaires This is a list of questions that are administered to intended users of the system with the purpose of getting their views on the functionality and usability requirement of the system. It can be written or verbal. The written questionnaires were sending to the field and the respondents gave their answers without any assistance from the research team where as verbal had the assistance of the researchers in answering the questions. We found out that the verbal questionnaires gave the most appropriate answers since the researcher would give the explanation of the questions unlike the written questions. Gantt chart This is a graphical representation that we used to analyze the performance of the project in respect to the human resource availed and the resources both financial and other materials that the project team used in order to accomplish the mission. Through this we were able to realize the activities that required to be crushed in order to meet the finish date of the project. In addition we realized that The project team especially the team responsible for engaging interviews with the stakeholders especially the secretaries and assistants in the faculties do not corporate. This has resulted into getting inaccurate information that is supposed to aid in system development. Project Management & Employability As at now all the scheduled tasks have been covered with minimal challenges. The team has gone an extra mile to include the users and specifically the students and lecturers I giving the views and suggestions on different usability and functional components that the system should incorporate. You should also report on how effectively you worked with other people involved in your Project – again refer back to your Project Contract). After integrating the new method of user involvement, we realize that there are a lot of disparities in terms of functional and non functional requirement. This is as a result of disparities in the user’s needs especially the students. We found out that some students and a few staff do not have internet knowledge and therefore the system interface should be made in a way that will not frustrate those. The programming team is doing very well so far in coming up with prototypes that are subjected to test by exposing it to students and staff for use. The other sections are progressing well except that more resources need to be pumped into data entry team because we realized that the database that was used previously had a lot of vulnerabilities in terms of data security. As such we had to come up with a new database using mySQL (Kendall, 2010) The project team especially the team responsible for engaging interviews with the stakeholders especially the secretaries and assistants in the faculties do not corporate. This has resulted into getting inaccurate information that is supposed to aid in system development. Results After integrating the new method of user involvement, we realize that there are a lot of disparities in terms of functional and non functional requirement. This is as a result of disparities in the user’s needs especially the clients. We found out that some clients and a few staff do not have internet knowledge and therefore the system interface should be made in a way that will not frustrate them (Kendall, 2010) During the past one week we had to make a formal communication to different faculties to corporate with the project team that are training them on the how to use the system. This is as a result of adjustment on the sequence of doing this because previously we had planned that the head of department are responsible for that but we realized that it was not convenient (Westland, 96) Conclusion at the end of the project implementation, the clients functional requirement of the system were met and at the same time the system and the website usability in terms of user interfaces was perfect. The project team was able to meet the customer’s business requirements. The major issue that came up during the implementation process is that during Data security came out as a risk and the issue that accrue is creating a new database Challenge- entering the already existing client’s data into the new database. There was also the issue of staff sabotage in some faculties. They give incorrect data with intention of failing the system due to fear of losing their jobs (Kendall, 2010) References Kendall, K & Kendall, J 2010, Systems Analysis and Design, Pearson Prentice Hall. Read More