This is the fourth part for C2006 Project: System Development Module. Haven’t read the first part yet? you can find the first part by clicking here. I uploaded my old Analysis Documentation for this module in the previous post.

In this post I will upload my old project Design Documentation for this module. Feel free to see it for your reference. Basically this Design documentation documents your plan to design your system. It includes the Data Flow Diagram (DFD) from your Analysis Documentation and also structure design and user interface design concept.

My old Design Documentation is as follows:

C2006

System Development

DESIGN DOCUMENTATION

“Clover Company”

Event Organizer’s System

Team Member            : 1. David Irawan          / 018800004337

2. Keith Nishan F       / 018800004402

3. Thomas Setiabudi / 018800004137

Table of Contents_ 2

I. Description Of New System_ 3

I. a. Narrative_ 3

I. b. Illustration Supporting Narrative_ 5

I. b. 1. Company’s Organization Chart 5

I. c. Process Flows 6

I. c. 1. Proposed System Context Diagram_ 6

I. c.3. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (1.0 Receive Order) 8

I. c. 4. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (2.0 Sales Process) 9

I. c. 5. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (3.0 Update) 10

I. c. 6. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (4.0 Report) 11

II. Detailed Design_ 12

II. a. Entity Relationship Diagram_ 12

II. b. Data Structure_ 14

II. c. Architectural Design_ 16

II. d. Procedural Design_ 18

II. d. 1. System Flowchart 18

II. e. Interface Design_ 28

II. e. 1. Common interface elements 28

II. e. 2. Main Menu_ 30

Description Of New System

I. a. Narrative

Clover Company’s Online System

This online system will be able to facilitate the company’s customer to place their order online. So virtually the customer will be able to access the system anywhere as long as the customer has an internet access. Before a customer can place their order, he/she has to register first by filling the registration form. After the customer submits the registration form, the system will send an e-mail to the customer’s e-mail to verify the registration. After the registration is verified, now the customer can place their order. While filling the order form, the customer will get many options to customize his/her order specification, such as options for catering company, event documentation, event place, etc. The customer will also able to make online payment for their order.

All the data and information inputted in this system will be stored in a database. Data about the customer registration, order data, online payment data, company’s financial data, and also data about the affiliate companies is stored in the system’s database. Besides storing data, the database will also used to generate various reports according to the company’s need.

Another system’s features for the customer are order tracking feature and customer feedback feature. Firstly, the order tracking feature allows the customer to get up to date information about the progress of his/her order. The customer will also be able to make changes to his/her order specification or get informed by the company if the order’s specification must be changed. Secondly, the customer can give a feedback to the company through the system if the customer is not satisfied by the company’s service or system or if the customer sees a room for improvement. This customer feedback will be reviewed by the company and be considered as suggestion to improve the company’s system or service.

Besides providing services for the company’s customer, the online system will also helps the company’s relation with its affiliate companies such as food Supplier Company, logistic company, event documenter company, printing company, etc. The online system will provide feature for a representative of each affiliate company to login into the system. After the affiliate company’s representative has login to the system, now he/she can use the system’s features for the affiliate company. There are some system feature for the affiliate company, they are: User Profile Module, Update Availability Schedule, Booking Status Module, and Feedback Module. The User Profile Module is used to display the detail information about the affiliate company, the user can edit or update some of this information if there is any changes in the affiliate company’s profile like contact number or address. Update Availability Schedule is a module where the affiliate company can keep their schedule synchronized with the Clover Company’s schedule. For example, Company A that provide event documentation service enter that it is available on 20 August 2008, then when a customer that want to order for an event on that date, the customer will see company A is in the option and can be chosen. The third module is booking status module, this module will be a reminder for an affiliate company to remind it about what are the dates that it is booked. And then the affiliate company can confirm the booking if they can do it. A confirmed booking from an affiliate company will update the order status that can be checked by the customer via order status tracking module.

The last part of the system is the administrator area, this part is used by the staffs of the Clover Company and no unauthorized person can access this area as this area is secured using password and the login page is not appear in the website’s main page. So, the staff of the company will need to open the login page, enter the user id and password, and then login to the system. After the staff login in the system, then he/she can use the features of the system that are: order management module, customer management module, affiliate company management module, company schedule and reminder, report generator, and finance report module.

Using the order management module provides ability for the Clover Company’s staff to manage all the orders from the customers. The staff can see each order detail and update the order preparation progress when it’s necessary. The Clover Company can tell the customer if there is any change to the order specification through this module. Customer management module will help the company to manage its customer data. The availability schedule from each affiliate company can be checked using affiliate company management module. The Clover Company also can check which companies available are for a certain date. Additionally, the Clover Company can check the status of an affiliate company about how many order that request its service, whether all the request have been confirmed, etc. The Clover Company also can send e-mail to any affiliate company if there is something urgent to ask. Moreover, the company can see its schedule and get reminded for upcoming events by the system too. While, for report generation there are report generator module and finance report module. Report generator module is used generate many kind of reports from the system database. It can produce reports like customer data report, affiliate companies report, report about the orders received in a certain period, etc. These reports can be used for an onscreen viewing only or printed to be used as meeting materials. And finally, The Company’s finance department can use finance report module to generate the company’s financial report. It has many categories of what period of time should the report show and also report for general condition or report on per case basis (e.g. report for each order).

I. b. Illustration Supporting Narrative

I. b. 1. Company’s Organization Chart

I. c. Process Flows

I. c. 1. Proposed System Context Diagram

I. c. 2. Proposed System 1^st level Data Flow Diagram

I. c.3. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (1.0 Receive Order)

I. c. 4. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (2.0 Sales Process)

I. c. 5. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (3.0 Update)

I. c. 6. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (4.0 Report)

II. Detailed Design

II. a. Entity Relationship Diagram

Entities:

1. Customer
   1. customer_id
   2. name
   3. gender
   4. date_of_birth
   5. e-mail
   6. phone
   7. ic/passport number

viii.      password

1. Affiliate
   1. affiliate_id
   2. name
   3. phone
   4. e-mail
   5. password
   6. service

1. Order
   1. order_id
   2. date
   3. customer_id
   4. affiliate_id_1
   5. affiliate_id_2
   6. affiliate_id_3
   7. payment_id

1. Schedule
   1. schedule_id
   2. date
   3. available

1. Payment
   1. payment_id
   2. status
   3. amount
   4. duedate
   5. type
   6. customer_id

a. Customer

Detail information of the customer

b. Affiliate

c. Order

d. Schedule

e. Payment

f. Admin

g. News

II.c. Architectural Design

II.d. Procedural Design

II.d.1. System Flowchart

II.e. Interface Design

In this part, we will show rough design of the system’s interface. The system will be displayed to the user as web pages, so it will more or less have the typical design of a web page such as header and left panel with buttons or hyperlinks. The buttons and text that will be shown here is just the essential buttons and text in the system. The actual system will have decorative elements such as pictures, texts, and features.

II.e.1. Common Interface Elements

Common interface elements are interface elements that will be shown in all the pages. There are three items fall on this category: header, left panel, and footer. Since these two items will be present in all the screens, so we will explain them separately here to reduce redundancy.

II. e. 1. i. header

II. e. 1. ii. left panel

II. e. 1. iii. footer

II.e.2. Main Menu

II.e.3. News

II.e.4. Login

II.e.5. Customer

II.e.6. Profile

II.e.7 Make Order

II.e.8. Payment

II.e.9. Order Status (Customer)

II.e.10. Affiliate

II.e.11. Upload Schedule

II.e.12. Order Status (Affiliate)

II.e.13. Administrator

II.e.14. Report

II.e.15. Order Management

II.e.16. Manage Customer & Affiliate

II.e.17. Manage News

II.e.18. Register

II.e.19. About us

II.e.20. Contact Us

III. Hardware and Software Selection

III.a. Hardware Specification

The minimum hardware specification to operate this system is:

1.      Intel Pentium IV processor or better

2.      Minimum 512 Mb RAM

3.      Color Monitor

4.      Keyboard

5.      Mouse with scroll button

6.      160 GB hard disk

7.      DSL Internet connection

8.      Laser Printer or Dot Matrix Printer

For the web server itself, we will host the website on another commercial web server, so we don’t need to buy the expensive web server computer for the company.

III.b. Software Specification

Ø  Development Software

The software that is used to develop this new system:

1.      Notepad ++

2.      PHP editor

3.      PHP (Personal Home Page)

4.      phpMyAdmin

5.      FileZilla

6.      Apache HTTP server

7.      MySQL

8.      Adobe Dreamweaver

9.      Adobe Photoshop

10.  Core FTP

Ø  Operational Software

The minimum requirement of the software to operate the system:

1.      Windows XP or Windows Vista

2.      Internet Browser (Mozilla Firefox v.2 or Internet Explorer 7)

– End Of Design Documentation –

To Be Continued in the next post…

Coming next, I will post my old project Final documentation for this module.

Any Question?

Feel free to ask me about this module using the comment section below.

This is the third part for C2006 Project: System Development Module. Haven’t read the first part yet? you can find the first part by clicking here. I uploaded my old project proposal for this module in the previous post.

In this post I will upload my old project Analysis Documentation for this module. Feel free to see it for your reference. Basically this Analysis documentation documents your activity to analyze the user requirement or the problem that will be solved by your system. We will try to refine the user requirement for the system by performing fact finding, describing the system, find its scope & constraints, etc.

My old Analysis Documentation is as follows:

C2006

System Development

ANALYSIS DOCUMENTATION

“Clover Company”

Team Member            : 1. David Irawan          / 018800004337

2. Keith Nishan F       / 018800004402

3. Thomas Setiabudi / 018800004137

Table of Contents

I. FACT FINDING

The purpose of performing fact finding activities in this project is to get a better understanding of the current system’s problem and limitation and also what is expected from the new system.

Our fact finding activity will involve the staffs of the Clover Company which is the event organizer company. There are two kinds of fact finding technique that we perform here, they are interview and questionnaire. The interview will be conducted to find an in depth information from some staff of the company, while the questionnaire will be given to all the staff of the company in order to get general information from all the company’s staffs.

I.A. Interview

Interview is the first fact finding method that we perform. There are nine staffs from three departments that we interviewed, 3 staffs from each department. The three departments are marketing, financial, and logistic department. Staffs from these three departments are interviewed because these departments will get the biggest impact when the new system is implemented in the future.

I.A.i. Interview for Marketing Department

The staffs that interviewed are:

a) Ujang – Director

b) Andi – Market Research & Analyst

c) Aneng – Advertising

1) Interview with Ujang – Director

ü 

2) Interview with Andi – Market Research & Analyst

3) Interview with Aneng - Advertising

I.A.ii. Interview for Financial Department

The staffs that interviewed are:

a) Santoso – Supervisor

b) Fendy – Treasurer

c) Siti – accountant

1) Interview with Santoso – Supervisor

ü              Interviewer      : Good afternoon Mr. Santoso. We appreciate that you want to spare your time for an interview session with us here.

ü              Santoso           : Yes, It’s not a big deal though.

ü              Interviewer      : Mr. Santoso, Is there anything you like to feedback about the system here?

ü              Santoso           : Yes of course! Currently I feel that the system in this company is a bit slow, especially to support us in the financial department.

ü              Interviewer      : Oh is that so, can you please explain it to us please?

ü              Santoso           : Well… you know, this company is dealing with so many people, the customers, the affiliate companies, and also the internal staffs. Sometimes it’s a bit tough to do our job as a financial department to collect information about financial data.

ü              Interviewer      : What kind of information that you need to collect?

ü              Santoso           : Information such as payment from customers or payment to the affiliate companies. We need to collect these information from various staffs in the company, and getting information from many people is not as easy as flipping your hand.

ü               Interviewer     : Do you have any problem when you need to collect this information?

ü              Santoso           : Yes. Sometimes one of the staff is in MC and cannot be contacted, another time a staff that I need to ask to is not in the office as he/she needs to prepare the event place or to consult with an affiliate company. Things like that happen quite often here.

ü              Interviewer      : Ok, I get your point. So you feel there is a communication problem here?

ü              Santoso           : Yes, sort of.

ü              Interviewer      : Mr. Santoso, what do you think about the internal communication in the company?

ü              Santoso           : Actually there is no serious problem of communication or relation problem between the staffs here. But, as some staffs especially the marketing and logistic department that needs to go out quite often, it’s not easy to meet them and ask them to update us with the most recent progress of a customer’s order.

ü              Interviewer      : Why do you need updated information from the staffs?

ü              Santoso           : Yes, we need to get information such as the expenses from an event preparation or recent payment made by a customer faster, so we can prepare the financial report faster too. But that is a bit hard to do now.

ü              Interviewer      : Ok Mr. Santoso, so… beside the difficulties to collect information, what are your difficulties when preparing a financial report?

ü              Santoso           : let’s see… For me, I have quite used to this system’s way to make a financial report using pen and papers since we have do it this way for years.

ü              Interview         : So you are very convenient with this method is it?

ü              Santoso           : Yes, you can say that. I never feels that this is bad, but when there is a lot of orders and make us needs to make a lot of financial reports for the company, sometimes I feel like I wanted a better system to make the financial report production process become faster.

ü              Interviewer      : Mr. Santoso, as you know that we developing a new system for this company, so what will you suggest for the company’s new system?

ü              Santoso           : Yes, I heard about it. Well, of course as I said earlier that we have some problems here in the financial department. So, I hope that the new system will be consider to help our department too so we can have a better work performance. In my opinion, I think the new system should be able to facilitate the communication between staffs here in the company, so we from the financial department can get financial information faster.

ü              Interviewer      : Thank you Mr. Santoso, that’s all that we want to ask from you.

2) Interview with Fendy – Treasurer

ü              Interviewer      : Good afternoon Mr. Fendy. We appreciate that you want to spare your time for an interview session with us here.

ü              Fendy  : No problem.

ü              Interviewer      : Mr. Fendy, Is there anything you like to feedback about the system here?

ü              Fendy  : Yes, I think that there are a lot of things that we need to improve from the company’s current system. Because I feel some problems from this system now.

ü              Interviewer      : Can you please explain to us what your job as a treasurer is?

ü              Fendy  : Well as a treasurer, I need to manage the income and expenses of the company. I receive the payment money and then distribute it to other department for them to pay the expenses.

ü              Interviewer      : What is your problem to do your task with your current system?

ü              Fendy  : There are 2 main problems in my job. First is to receive money from the customer. Second is to get the money from the logistic agent who receives the payment.

ü              Interviewer      : Can you explain each problem?

ü              Fendy  : The first problem is to receive money from the customer because some customer late to make the payment and I need to give reminder to them. Or if the customer doesn’t pay the full amount, then I will need to remind them about the rest of the payment and the deadline to make the payment.

ü              Interviewer      : So you need to make many reminders just for one customer only?

ü              Fendy  : Yes. It is.

ü              Interviewer      : Then how about the second problem?

ü              Fendy  : The second problem is to get the money from the logistic agent who receives the payment because the logistic agent himself needs to go out from the office most of the time to do his/her task.

ü              Interviewer      : Oh I see, it will be difficult in your side.

ü              Fendy  : Of course it is.

ü              Interviewer      : Mr. Fendy, What do you think about the internal communication in the company?

ü              Fendy  : Oh this is another problem also. A lot of staffs need to work on the field, outside the office, to prepare for the events such as the event place, the foods, equipment, entertainment, etc. So it is a bit hard to keep updated information with them. Even they got hand phone with them, it’s a bit unpractical when you call a lot of people just to ask them to update with the newest information that is needed by our department.

ü              Interviewer      : Ok, I get your point. Now let’s talk about your job as a staff in financial department, you need to prepare some financial reports for the company right?

ü              Fendy  : Of course, I need to make some financial reports but I just report to the accountant about the company’s income and expense then he/she will do the complete financial report.

ü              Interviewer      : So you don’t make all the financial report. Then do you know the difficulties for the accountant to make the financial report?

ü              Fendy  : All right, preparing a lot of financial report is very hard to be done now as we make it in very slow speed. The use of pen and papers is very tiresome when there is a lot of financial report that needs to be done quickly. So when the deadline is close, sometimes I need to help accountant to make a financial report. The slow information update from another department concerning financial information like income and expenses also adds the problem.

ü              Interviewer      : I see… Mr. Fendy, as you know that we developing a new system for this company, so what will you suggest for the company’s new system?

ü              Fendy  : Oh, yes that is very good news that I heard! I really hope that the new system will be able to help us here in the financial department. I suggest that the new system equipped with features that help the internal communication within the company and also help us to produce a financial report faster.

ü              Interviewer      : We will use your suggestion as our consideration in designing the new system. Thank you Mr. Fendy, that’s all that we want to ask from you.

3) Interview with Siti – Accountant

ü              Interviewer      : Good afternoon Mrs. Siti. We appreciate that you want to spare your time for an interview session with us here.

ü              Siti       : Yes, please feel free to ask.

ü              Interviewer      : Thank you. First of all, we want to ask, is there anything you like to feedback about the system here?

ü              Siti       : Do you mean the system for the financial department?

ü              Interviewer      : Yes it is.

ü              Siti       : Oh, I’m quite new here but I think that the current system here for the financial department is horrible!

ü              Interviewer      : Ok, what do you mean by that?

ü              Siti       : I tell you. The first time I started to work here, I was surprised that I have to work in a financial department without any accounting software! So what we do is we collect all the information that we need then we start to make the financial report by writing it using pen on a piece of paper.

ü              Interviewer      : Where you keep the old financial reports?

ü              Siti       : The archive is kept in a big pile of file holders. It is very frustrating to look for a single piece of old financial report, and also we cannot keep too many archive due to limited office space, so we need to throw away old documents periodically. This is very bad for a company with so many customers like this; they really need to improve it.

ü              Interviewer      : How if you need to see the old documents that have been thrown away?

ü               Siti      : Ermm…that is the problem. If the document that we look for have been thrown away then there is no way to find it.

ü              Interviewer      : Do you have any kind of backup?

ü              Siti       : Of course not. Because the backup will consume double space needed.

ü              Interviewer      : Ok we note down that. Now we would like to ask you, what do you think about the internal communication in the company?

ü              Siti       : Well, actually I don’t really know about it, because the other two staffs in the financial company do the information collecting and my job was only to write the reports based on the collected information.

ü              Interviewer      : Oh I see… but do you think that there is any problem in this area?

ü              Siti       : Personally I don’t feel any problem in the internal communication between the staffs in this company because I don’t do much information gathering from the other staffs. But I think I remember that my colleague say that it is very slow for them to gather the information from another staffs in this company…yea that’s all I know.

ü              Interviewer      : Yes, maybe we should get more information about this from the other two staffs in the financial department.

ü              Siti       : Yes of course.

ü              Interviewer      : Anyway, let’s move on to the next question. What are your difficulties when preparing a financial report?

ü              Siti       : My difficulties when preparing a financial report is mainly with the slow manual system. I really need software that helps us, the staffs in the financial department, to do our jobs. It’s very stressful when we have to make a lot of reports using just papers and pen. We need a better system.

ü              Interviewer      : Yes Mrs. Siti, as you say that the company needs a better system, we would like to ask you, what will you suggest for the company’s new system?

ü              Siti       : Because I work in the financial department, then I would like to suggest that the new company system will help us to do our jobs to make the financial reports faster. The feature to make the financial report also need to be synchronized with our needs as we need to make the reports for some different types of periods, It can be monthly report, quarterly, yearly, or a financial report just for one particular customer order. I think it will be really good if the company’s new system can do that.

ü              Interviewer      : If the new system will use computerized system to help you make the financial report, do you think that you will able to use it or you need to get some training?

ü              Siti       : It’s good if the new system is computerized system, I can use it right away without any training  as long as the new system is easy and simple to understand.

ü              Interviewer      : We will use your suggestion as our consideration in designing the new system. Thank you Mrs. Siti, that’s all that we want to ask from you.

I.A.iii. Interview for Logistic Department

The staffs that interviewed are:

a) Iya – Logistic Agent

b) Ayi – Logistic Coordinator

c) Ajeb – Logistic Assistant

1) Interview with Iya – Logistic Agent

ü  Interviewer   : Good morning Mr. Iya…How your day today? Thank you for your time here..

ü  Mr. Iya         : Morning too…Today is great…Sure…

ü  Interviewer   : That’s good to hear…Ok now let’s start it…First of all I want to ask about what do you think of the current system?

ü  Mr. Iya         : I am not quite satisfied with current system because I think it’s not effective enough to do it.

ü  Interviewer   : Ok.. Why do you think it’s not effective?

ü  Mr.Iya          : Because There are many things that we have to do repeatedly in preparing an event for the customer.

ü  Interviewer   : Can you mention what are the actions that you need to do in preparing the event?

ü  Mr. Iya         : Yes, sure. When there is a customer that wants to create a party, they tell us about what they need and then we have to contact our affiliate company that can provide what we need. And we need to do it repeatedly.

ü  Interviewer   : Ok, so how you contact the affiliate company and the customer about the event?

ü  Mr. Iya         : We have to contact them by phone or email and sometimes these two ways got delay to get reply. That is why I say that this system ineffective.

ü  Interviewer   : I see…so can you tell me about the detail the communication between you and the affiliated company?

ü  Mr. Iya         : Ok sure… if we get an order from customer, we immediately contact the affiliated company to ask about the availability then we will wait for the reply from the affiliated company. But the problem is that we have to wait for the reply. Sometimes the affiliated company is not reply to us immediately because they are busy with other things.

ü  Interviewer   : Do you have any idea or suggestion to make the communication faster?

ü  Mr. Iya         : Well, maybe the company needs to change the procedure of the communication with the affiliate company.

ü  Interviewer   : I see…I will write down that…And what do you think about the company’s working procedure?

ü  Mr. Iya         : There are several people in this department so we have to work together to do the task. Actually we often get some trouble when we have to contact the other person. That’s pretty annoying for me.

ü  Interviewer   : Why it’s so annoying for you to contact the other person in this company?

ü  Mr. Iya         : Because they usually busy doing their own tasks, so they will be late to respond when we need to contact them.

ü  Interviewer   : I see that you have a coordinator in this department. Do you think that the coordinator can solve this problem or we need to change the whole system?

ü  Mr. Iya         : I’m not quite sure about this. Maybe you can ask her directly.

ü  Interviewer   : Ok, sure I will ask her later…The last question is what will you suggest for the new system?

ü  Mr. Iya         : I think it will be great if there is a machine or something that can help us with the communication and make it more effective.

ü  Interviewer   : Ok then…That’s all for the interview…Thank you for your time and have a nice day!

ü  Mr. Iya         : Thank’s bro… Have a nice day too…

2) Interview with Ayi – Logistic Coordinator

ü  Interviewer   : Good afternoon Mrs. Ayi…How are you today? Thank you for your time here…

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : Morning…Fine…

ü  Interviewer   : Shall we start our interview?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : Sure. Go ahead.

ü  Interviewer   : What do you think about the current system in the company?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : I will tell the truth here…The system very annoying…

ü  Interviewer   : Why do you think like that?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : Ok I give you a picture…If the order came, we have to contact the affiliated company, and my duty is to choose staff to come to the affiliated company to give a call or send an email to the affiliated company.

ü  Interviewer   : I see…then how do you choose the staff to do that task?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : ok, I will explain to you. So, we have some staffs in this logistic department, and I will choose the most reliable staff to be the agent who is responsible for certain task. And also an assistant to help him/her to do the task.

ü  Interviewer   : Can you describe the detail about the communication with the affiliated company?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : We have to contact the affiliate companies by calling them or send a staff to go to their place. Then they will reply to us.

ü  Interviewer   : Usually, how fast the respond from the affiliate companies?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : Well some of them give a fast response but some other companies are very slow to respond us. This slows down our works.

ü  Interviewer   : Oh I see, and then what you will do if the respond is slow?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : We cannot wait forever, so I will send some staff to go to the affiliate company’s place again, but that also not guarantee that they get the response at that day because the affiliate company itself sometimes confuse with their own schedule.

ü  Interviewer   : I see…that way will cost a lot of money…because we have to go back the same twice just for one reason…Am I correct?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : Yes…you got the point…

ü  Interviewer   : What do you think about the company procedure?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : I think it is fine but you know…some people often do mistakes and they give wrong information to me and when there is an update about something, they late to inform me.

ü  Interviewer   : If let’s say there is a staff that make mistake in preparing the event, then what you will do?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : That’s bad, but if it happens then I will need to inform the customer that the preparation is having a problem, and we need to discuss with the customer about the solution

ü  Interviewer   : Ok…That one is very troublesome…if there will be new system to replace the current system, what will you suggest?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : Ohhh…that would be nice…I think I will recommend a system that can do the update more quickly and I can check the update directly.

ü  Interviewer   : I note down that…Do you think that there is something else that I missed out?

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : I don’t think so, but I think that it will be nice if the new system can be finished as soon as possible.

ü  Interviewer   : thank you for the interview…have a nice day Mrs. Ayi!

ü  Mrs. Ayi       : You are welcome…Have a nice day too…

3) Interview with Ajeb

ü  Interviewer   : Good Afternoon Mr. Ajeb…How are you today? Thank you for your time here…

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Good morning too…I am fine…No problem..

ü  Interviewer   : Ok let’s start the interview…

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Ok sure.

ü  Interviewer   : Let’s start with your opinion about the current system?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : In my opinion, the current system is a bit not satisfied because we have a problem when we have to contact the affiliated company.

ü  Interviewer   : Do you think that there are some advantages of using the current system?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : hmm… I don’t think there is a significant advantage from the current system.

ü  Interviewer   : Then, what are the disadvantages of the current system?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : In my opinion as logistic assistant, the current system is having problem to support our communication with the affiliate company.

ü  Interviewer   : Hmm…okay…can you explain about the problem with the communication with the affiliated company?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Hmm…like this… if you want to contact the affiliated company there are two ways to do it, by phone or email from the company and go to the affiliated company itself.

ü  Interviewer   : Oh I see, and then who do that task?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : That’s the job of the logistic agent, and I as the assistant just need to assist the agent to do the job.

ü  Interviewer   : What do you do to assist the logistic agent?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Sometimes we need to contact many affiliate companies and its hard to that by just one person. So I assist the agent to give a call or send an email to the affiliated company.

ü  Interviewer   : Do you have any problem when assisting the agent?

ü  Mr.Ajeb        : Yes.. The affiliated company sometimes late to give a reply to us.

ü  Interviewer   :  How if the affiliate company late to give respond until deadline is getting nearer?

ü  Mr.Ajeb        : It is still not a problem if the deadline is still long enough but the problem is when the time almost reaches a point that is the affiliated company must give reply now or else the project will be delayed. When that time comes, we got stressed because after that we have to do everything rushed.

ü  Interviewer   : Ok…I got your point…What do you think about the company’s working procedure?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Hmm…I’m not so sure about it but I will tell you what I know…The procedure is simple that is to give the order to the affiliated company then they will give us their availability then we can confirm it with the customer. But sometimes the affiliated company already gives an answer to the one of our person in this department but that person is forgot to tell the other staff that the affiliated company already gives an answer, so the other staff will ask a reply from the affiliated company. This is one of example for wasting our energy. So the company’s working procedure is not effective for me.

ü  Interviewer   : I take a note from that…What will you suggest if there is a new system to replace the current system?

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Hmm…Maybe I will suggest a system that can give us an effective way to communicate and update the information more quickly so we don’t have to waste our time and energy. That is all.

ü  Interviewer   : Thank you for your suggestion and time Mr. Ajeb…Have a nice day!!

ü  Mr. Ajeb       : Sure…Have a nice day too..

I.B. Questionnaire

The questionnaire that we spread to all the Clover Company’s staffs is:

Clover Company New System Project
QUESTIONNAIRE
Please Answer these questions by ticking in the appropriate boxes
1. Gender :	Male							Female
2. Which department are you in?
Marketing				Financial
Logistic				Management
3. How long have you work in this company?
0 – 2 years				5 years
2 – 4 years				> 5 years
4. Are you satisfied with the current company system?
Very satisfied				Not Satisfied
Satisfied				Very unsatisfied
5. Do you think that there is a lot of problem in the current system that limits your job productivity?
Yes				No problem at all
I’m not sure
6. If you answered “yes” for question 5, how serious is the current system’s problem?
Very serious				Common system problems
Serious				Only minor problems
7. What do you think about the company’s service to the customer in terms of receiving the orders?
Very good				inadequate, placing order should be easier
Good, but need to be improved
8. Currently the customer need to come personally to make payment, what do you think about it?
It is good enough				I don’t know
Should be changed and improved
9. What is your opinion about the current company’s advertisement?
It’s enough
Need to be improved with new advertisement media
10. Is the current system helpful in facilitating communication or coordination among all the staffs in the company?
Very helpful				Not so helpful
Helpful				Not helpful at all
11. How is the company’s coordination with it’s affiliate companies?
Nice coordination between companies				Not good enough, need improvement
Good, but sometimes got problems				Very bad, the system doesn’t support it
12. If there is a request for a report, how fast is it can be made?
Fast and satisfying				slow, but still acceptable
Fast enough				very slow
13. Do you think that the company system should be upgraded?
Not right now
Yes, as soon as possible
No
I’m not sure about it
14. If there is a new system, which aspect of the company that need to be emphasized?
Financial Department				Logistic Department
Marketing Department				Others, please specify________________
15. How do you describe the need of new company system in a 1 to 5 scale (1 unimportant, 5 important)?
1				3
2				4
5
16. Which Type Of New System That You Prefer?
Offline System				Online System
For Each Department
Please answer according to your department.
This part ask about the level of satisfaction on current system’s services/procedure (1 lowest, 5 highest)
Marketing Department
System Service/Procedure		1	2		3	4	5		Comment
1. Receive Order from customer									______________________
2. Customer payment method									______________________
3. Company Advertising									______________________
4. Communication with customer									______________________
Financial Department
System Service/Procedure		1	2		3	4	5		Comment
1. Collect financial information from staffs									______________________
2. Manage customer’s payment									______________________
3. Produce financial report									______________________
4. Archiving old financial history									______________________
Logistic Department
System Service/Procedure		1	2		3	4	5		Comment
1. Communicate with affiliate companies									______________________
2. Synchronize schedule									______________________
3. Confirm orders with affiliate company									______________________
4. Report changes to order specification									______________________
Management
System Service/Procedure		1	2		3	4	5		Comment
1. Time needed to make report									______________________
2. Availability of old data									______________________
3. Customer data management									______________________
4. Affiliate company data management									______________________

II. NARRATIVE

1. System’s narrative

Clover Company’s Online System

This online system will be able to facilitate the company’s customer to place their order online. So virtually the customer will be able to access the system anywhere as long as the customer has an internet access. Before a customer can place their order, he/she has to register first by filling the registration form. After the customer submits the registration form, the system will send an e-mail to the customer’s e-mail to verify the registration. After the registration is verified, now the customer can place their order. While filling the order form, the customer will get many options to customize his/her order specification, such as options for catering company, event documentation, event place, etc. The customer will also able to make online payment for their order.

All the data and information inputted in this system will be stored in a database. Data about the customer registration, order data, online payment data, company’s financial data, and also data about the affiliate companies is stored in the system’s database. Besides storing data, the database will also used to generate various reports according to the company’s need.

Another system’s features for the customer are order tracking feature and customer feedback feature. Firstly, the order tracking feature allows the customer to get up to date information about the progress of his/her order. The customer will also be able to make changes to his/her order specification or get informed by the company if the order’s specification must be changed. Secondly, the customer can give a feedback to the company through the system if the customer is not satisfied by the company’s service or system or if the customer sees a room for improvement. This customer feedback will be reviewed by the company and be considered as suggestion to improve the company’s system or service.

Besides providing services for the company’s customer, the online system will also helps the company’s relation with its affiliate companies such as food Supplier Company, logistic company, event documenter company, printing company, etc. The online system will provide feature for a representative of each affiliate company to login into the system. After the affiliate company’s representative has login to the system, now he/she can use the system’s features for the affiliate company. There are some system feature for the affiliate company, they are: User Profile Module, Update Availability Schedule, Booking Status Module, and Feedback Module. The User Profile Module is used to display the detail information about the affiliate company, the user can edit or update some of this information if there is any changes in the affiliate company’s profile like contact number or address. Update Availability Schedule is a module where the affiliate company can keep their schedule synchronized with the Clover Company’s schedule. For example, Company A that provide event documentation service enter that it is available on 20 August 2008, then when a customer that want to order for an event on that date, the customer will see company A is in the option and can be chosen. The third module is booking status module, this module will be a reminder for an affiliate company to remind it about what are the dates that it is booked. And then the affiliate company can confirm the booking if they can do it. A confirmed booking from an affiliate company will update the order status that can be checked by the customer via order status tracking module.

The last part of the system is the administrator area, this part is used by the staffs of the Clover Company and no unauthorized person can access this area as this area is secured using password and the login page is not appear in the website’s main page. So, the staff of the company will need to open the login page, enter the user id and password, and then login to the system. After the staff login in the system, then he/she can use the features of the system that are: order management module, customer management module, affiliate company management module, company schedule and reminder, report generator, and finance report module.

Using the order management module provides ability for the Clover Company’s staff to manage all the orders from the customers. The staff can see each order detail and update the order preparation progress when it’s necessary. The Clover Company can tell the customer if there is any change to the order specification through this module. Customer management module will help the company to manage its customer data. The availability schedule from each affiliate company can be checked using affiliate company management module. The Clover Company also can check which companies available are for a certain date. Additionally, the Clover Company can check the status of an affiliate company about how many order that request its service, whether all the request have been confirmed, etc. The Clover Company also can send e-mail to any affiliate company if there is something urgent to ask. Moreover, the company can see its schedule and get reminded for upcoming events by the system too. While, for report generation there are report generator module and finance report module. Report generator module is used generate many kind of reports from the system database. It can produce reports like customer data report, affiliate companies report, report about the orders received in a certain period, etc. These reports can be used for an onscreen viewing only or printed to be used as meeting materials. And finally, The Company’s finance department can use finance report module to generate the company’s financial report. It has many categories of what period of time should the report show and also report for general condition or report on per case basis (e.g. report for each order).

2. Hardware Requirements

The minimum hardware specification to operate this system is:

1.      Intel Pentium IV processor or better

2.      Minimum 512 Mb RAM

3.      Color Monitor

4.      Keyboard

5.      Mouse with scroll button

6.      160 GB hard disk

7.      DSL Internet connection

8.      Laser Printer or Dot Matrix Printer

For the web server itself, we will host the website on another commercial web server, so we don’t need to buy the expensive web server computer for the company.

3. Software Requirements

Ø  Development Software

The software that is used to develop this new system:

1.      Notepad ++

2.      PHP editor

3.      PHP (Personal Home Page)

4.      phpMyAdmin

5.      FileZilla

6.      Apache HTTP server

7.      MySQL

8.      Adobe Dreamweaver

9.      Adobe Photoshop

10.  Core FTP

Ø  Operational Software

The minimum requirement of the software to operate the system:

1.      Windows XP or Windows Vista

2.      Internet Browser (Mozilla Firefox v.2 or Internet Explorer 7)

III. PROCESS FLOW

The DFD (Data Flow Diagram) of the system is as follows:

1. Proposed System Context Diagram

2. Proposed System 1^st level Data Flow Diagram

3. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (1.0 Receive Order)

4. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (2.0 Sales Process)

5. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (3.0 Update)

6. 2^nd level Data Flow Diagram (4.0 Report)

IV. ILLUSTRATIVE SUPPORTIVE

IV. ILLUSTRATIVE SUPPORTIVE

V. PROBLEMS & LIMITATIONS

There are some problems faced by the Clover Company with their current system:

Ø  Problem to Get order

The customer can only place their order in office hours, because the customer needs to manually call the company to speak with a staff.

Ø  Ineffective communication

Because the EO team consists of so many persons who have different tasks, the head will need to get report from each person by calling them one by one.

And if there is any changes of requirement from the customer (e.g. changes of place), the head will need to call the person who is in charge of it.

Ø  Problem with payment tracking

The payment is made and written manually, so it will take a bit long time if the company needs information about it and also the customer needs to meet the staff personally in order to make the payment.

Ø  Inadequate financial report

The financial report is on per case basis. So the company doesn’t have detailed information of all the transaction that has been made.

Ø  Difficult to evaluate all the company’s activities

The current system will discard all the information about the previous events and order, so at the end of working year it is difficult to analyze all these information in order to improve the company’s productivity.

Ø  Unsynchronized information with affiliation companies

The Clover Company affiliated with several other companies such as food supplier, printing company, decorations, etc. Every time the Clover Company gets an order, it needs to contact each of these companies asking for their availability for a certain date. This is ineffective because they have to do it for each order.

Ø  Lack of publication and advertising

The current system doesn’t help the Clover Company to advertise its business and to expand their business range. Because they just depend on the events like wedding exhibition and also mouth to mouth publication.

VI. SCOPE & CONSTRAINTS

Here we will describe the scope and constraints of this project.

a. Project Scope

This project will develop an online system to help Clover Company as an event organizer company, to make their working procedure more effective in certain areas. These areas include:

1)                  Order management

2)                  Customer management

3)                  Receive online payment

4)                  Schedule synchronization with affiliate companies

5)                  Generate reports for financial and management

So, this system won’t help the company to do its technical works on the field, such as surveying the event place, choosing the right persons to do certain things, etc.

b. Project Constraints

There are some constraints for this system:

i)                    Time Constraint

There are two types of time constraints, present and future. Present time constraints are requirement that must be met as soon as the system is developed or implemented, while future time constraints are the requirements that will be necessary at some time in the future.

The present constraint of the system is that the system must be able to take over the old manual functions from the current system. Example: manage orders, manage customers, receive payments, and synchronize schedule with the affiliate companies. These constraints must be met as soon as the system is implemented because these requirements are crucial for the company’s daily operation.

On the other hand, the future constraints of the system are to make synchronization between the main office with the branch offices, which is not important now because the company haven’t had any branch yet.

ii)                  Internal & External Constraint

Most of the system’s constraints come from internal company’s requirement because the company’s staff demands a better and more efficient system to help them to do their works and also from the management in order to make the company performs better.

The external constraint will affect just few things about the online payment feature that implemented in the system. Because the security matter of the online payment such as to protect the privacy of the customer and to secure the transaction, the system needs to follow standard requirement from outside the company such as the bank requirement and also how to implement secured site for payment using PayPal, e-NETS, Visa, etc.

iii)                Mandatory Constraint

The mandatory constraints of the system are constraints that are absolutely essential to be met because if these requirements is failed to be satisfied, then the company’s operation will be suspended.

Examples of these mandatory constraints are:

ü  Order Management

ü  Customer Management

ü  Synchronization with affiliate companies

iv)                Desirable Constraint

Desirable constraints are constraints that are less important than the mandatory constraint. The system still able to do its main purpose for the company without these constraints, but if these constraints are met, the system will be better.

Examples of these desirable constraints are:

ü  Online payment

ü  Generate report for Finance and Management department

Feel free to ask me about this module using the comment section below.

Coming next, I will post my old project Design documentation for this module.

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This is the second part for C2006 Project: System Development Module. Haven’t read the first part yet? you can find the first part by clicking here.

In this post I will upload my old project proposal for this module. Feel free to see it for your reference. Basically this proposal describe what is the problem that my group wants to solve and what is the system that we are going to develop in order to solve this problem.

My old proposal is as follows:

PROJECT PROPOSAL

C2006

System Development

“Clover Company”

Team Member            : 1. David Irawan          / 018800004337

2. Keith Nishan F       / 01880000

3. Thomas Setiabudi / 018800004137

Lecturer Name           : Mullaikodi Vaithilingam

Submission date          : June   16, 2008

Table of Contents

I. Introduction

Clover Company

Clover Company is an event organizer company (Clover Company) that handles a certain kind of party like sweet seventeen’s party, birthday party, wedding party, etc. The company will take a job from people who want to make a party. They know about the company from their friend or relative or someone that they know and also from the wedding exhibition. Sometimes the Clover Company joins the wedding exhibition to promote the company’s event organizing business so more people will know about the company and what exactly the company is doing. Clover Company give the company’s sample photo from previous party that it handle so people can get picture about its previous job. And then if they interested, they can contact the company and make it as their event organizer.

When the order for organizing some events comes, Clover Company will immediately contact the person who hired it. The company will ask them what kind of party they want to make, what is the theme they want to use(like summer, winter, spring or Japanese, western or futuristic, old style), how many people they want to invite, where they want to held the party(some people want to make party only in certain place), etc.

After all the information is gathered, the company can start to prepare the party. When the day comes, the company organizes everything and up until now all the customer are satisfied with what the Clover Company have done.

II. Current System

The company is currently using this system to do its business operation:

Ø  Customer order

Customer places their order by calling the company. Then, the customer will tell the contact person from Clover Company what event they want to have, what theme, the budget, and any specification for the event. Then the contact person will record it or write it down on a book.

Ø  Job Distribution

After they get the order, the contact person will pass the order to the head of the company. The head will then distribute the job to each department to check the availability for the event preparation. For example: who will contact the food supplier, who will contact the printing company to print the invitations, etc.

Ø  Internal communication and communication between Clover Company with customer

Each member of EO team will inform the head about their task progress. And the head will be the information source for the customer. So, when the customer wants to know the order progress or wants to change something in the order specification, he/she will have to call and speak to the EO head.

Ø  Payment Method

The customer will have to make the payment manually, and then a staff from the Clover Company will receive the payment, take note and write a receipt.

Ø  Account Management

The staff of finance department will note all the company’s transaction and produce the financial report for a period of time. E.g. monthly or yearly report

Ø  Documentation of previous projects

All the data and information that are written when the Clover Company prepares an event will be discarded after the event is done. Because they write all the information on papers, so it will take a lot of space if they want to store it. The result is the company never does any evaluation based on the previous works.

Ø  Company promotion / advertising

The company advertises itself by following events like wedding exhibition or from mouth to mouth information. That is the way they advertise the company’s service. And their scope of operation is still limited in one city only.

III. Problems and Limitation:

There are some problems faced by the Clover Company with their current system:

Ø  Problem to Get order

The customer can only place their order in office hours, because the customer needs to manually call the company to speak with a staff.

Ø  Ineffective communication

Because the EO team consists of so many persons who have different tasks, the head will need to get report from each person by calling them one by one.

And if there is any changes of requirement from the customer (e.g. changes of place), the head will need to call the person who is in charge of it.

Ø  Problem with payment tracking

The payment is made and written manually, so it will take a bit long time if the company needs information about it and also the customer needs to meet the staff personally in order to make the payment.

Ø  Inadequate financial report

The financial report is on per case basis. So the company doesn’t have detailed information of all the transaction that has been made.

Ø  Difficult to evaluate all the company’s activities

The current system will discard all the information about the previous events and order, so at the end of working year it is difficult to analyze all these information in order to improve the company’s productivity.

Ø  Unsynchronized information with affiliation companies

The Clover Company affiliated with several other companies such as food supplier, printing company, decorations, etc. Every time the Clover Company gets an order, it needs to contact each of these companies asking for their availability for a certain date. This is ineffective because they have to do it for each order.

Ø  Lack of publication and advertising

The current system doesn’t help the Clover Company to advertise its business and to expand their business range. Because they just depend on the events like wedding exhibition and also mouth to mouth publication.

IV. Objective of the New System

Due to the problems and limitations faced by the company by using the current system, so there is a growing need to develop and use a new system that not only eliminates all the problems and limitations caused by the current system but also increase the company’s business productivity and efficiency.

The problems of the old system are in terms of getting orders from customer, doesn’t support effective communication between team and communication to customer, no proper database to keep data and produce reports needed by the company, and also doesn’t facilitate up to date information to synchronize the Clover Company with its affiliated companies.

Apart from the problems mentioned earlier, the current system also not sophisticated enough to help the company to promote and advertise its business. That’s why it’s hard to expand the business coverage area of the company. The new system that replaces the current system should be able to eliminate all these problems and limitation caused by the current system.

The new system should be able to help the Clover Company not just in one field but in every aspect involved in the company’s business. The new system should help to give better service for the customer so customers will be more satisfied with the company’s service. For example, easier access for customer to place their order, track the status and progress of the order, ability to provide the customer with easier and convenient way to make payment,  payment tracking, etc.

Beside that, the new system needs to help the Clover Company in its affiliation with other companies (e.g. Food Supplier Company, Printing Company, Instrument rental, etc.). The new system must be able to eliminate the current communication and schedule synchronization problem with these affiliate companies by providing a convenient service for these companies to give up to date information about their availability to the Clover Company.

Finally, the new system must be able to increase internal productivity of the Clover Company. The current system that uses papers and pen to document all activities and information must be replaced by the new system. The new system needs to provide a digital database that keeps all the company’s record and information. This database will reduce the cost of buying papers and pen, save more spaces, and also cut working time as all the needed information is ready anytime a specific report needs to be produced. This will help the company to review its records and to make a decision on how to improve the company’s productivity. The new system also has to help the company’s financial department by providing a financial report about the company’s income, outcome, and profits in a certain period of time (e.g. monthly, weekly, or yearly).

So, the objectives of the new system are:

Ø  Provides better service for customer.

Ø  Support communication between company, customer, and affiliate companies

Ø  Provides Database that able to generate report for the company

Ø  Capable of promoting the company’s business

Ø  Reduce expenses and increase company’s productivity

Ø  Support the company’s financial reporting.

V. Description of the New System

In order to be a useful and productive system, the new system must be a better system compared to the old system. The new system will be equipped with useful features that will eliminate the existing problems and limitations caused by the current system.

The new system will be an online system. It is a website that can be used by the customer, the Clover Company, and also the affiliate companies. So, it is not just a simple website to show general information but an online system that can be used to manage the company’s business and increase its productivity.

The features of the new system are:

1. Customer registration and login

Before a customer can make place an order or use any other facility within the system, he/she will need to fill an online registration form, get user ID and password, and login to the system using his/her user ID and password. The personal information of a customer from the registration form will be kept on a database, so it can be easily used by the company if needed in the future.

2. Online order module

The new system will be an online system in the Internet, so it can provides an online order service. This module will really helps the customer to place their order anytime they want (no office hour limitation) and from everywhere as long as they have an Internet access. Using this module, the customer not only able to place an order, but also track their order preparation progress. If there are any changes on the order specification and details (e.g. Change the place of the events, change the documentation type used to document the event, etc.), the customer can also make it online. It will really help to reduce communication gap between customer and the Clover Company.

3. Online payment module

After a customer place an order, there is no need for he/she to come personally to the company’s office just to make the payment. He/she can do the payment from the website itself (online payment). It will allow the customer to pay using credit card, e-NETS, etc. This module is also able to generate an online receipt after the customer makes a payment. Another feature of this module is to generate a payment tracking method, it means that in the case where a customer pay just a part of the cost, the module can generate a report about how much more payment need to be made and the due date of the payment.

4. Database

The system will have a database to keep various records and information of the company’s business. This database will be the central data warehouse, so the company can access and finds any needed information easily.

5. Affiliate Companies module

As stated before that one of the current system’s problem is that it is hard to keep the schedule of the Clover Company and the affiliate companies synchronized. So the answer of this problem is a module for affiliate companies that are implemented in this new system. This module will allow a person from any affiliate company to login to the system. After they login into the system, they can use some functions of the system. First, they will be able to give information about what are the dates that they are available to be booked by the Clover Company. Second, they can check their current booking status, so they can see on which date they are booked, for what event, where is the event, etc.

6. Finance Report Generator

This finance report generator module is very useful for the company. Unlike manual report, it can be used to produce an up to date finance report anytime it’s needed. The report will covers about the company’s income, outcome, profit, loss, etc. So this module will really save time and effort to make a company financial report.

7. Company Activities Report

Beside the finance report, the new system will be able to produce another report for the company. It can report about the orders that have been finished, upcoming orders due date, list of customers, etc. Many kinds of report can be generated from the system’s database. This report plays an important part when it is used to evaluate the company’s performance. These reports can be used for a decision making by the company in order to improve the company’s performance.

8. Secured Access

Since the system database keeps a lot of important and confidential information of the company, so the system also enforce security to make sure that only an authorized user can view the information. This is implemented by using a login with combination of user ID and password in order to see the data on the database. Of course not everyone who login can see all the information in the database, for example a customer will just be able to see information for his/her own order status, but the system administrator or the Clover Company staff can see a lot more information from the database.

9. Up to date news

Apart from all the system function that requires the user to login, there is also a public part of the website that can be accessed by everyone without need to register or login. These parts of the website will contain various information and news about the company. This will help the company’s publication and attract new customers with a huge coverage area, which cannot be done by the current system.

VI. Benefits of the New system

1. Improved customer service

The new system can deliver a better service for the customer. Features like online registration, online order, online payment, order status and progress check, edit order specification online, etc. These features are far better than the current system, that will result in increased customer satisfaction level, increase the company’s reputation, and also attract new customers.

2. Fast and easy communication

The new system provides as a fast and easy communication media between the Clover Company, Customer, and affiliate companies. There is no need for the Clover Company to manually make a call to an affiliate company to ask for their availability or to call a customer to inform if there are any changes to the order specification, because all these things are time consuming and it will be eliminated by the new system. Using the ability of the new system that allows everyone involved in an event order preparation to update the event progress status, any updates to an order progress can be checked online through the website. When there is an important change to the order specification, the system will send an e-mail to the customer to notify him/her about it.

3. Provide detailed information about the company’s previous works

Using the database of the new system to record all the orders and job that have been done by the company, the new system can produce a detailed report about all the previous works that have been done by the Clover Company. The report may include the information about the company’s customer in last 3 months, the kinds of events ordered by the customer in last year, etc. various report can be produced. And the most important thing is that the company never loses its history record and it’s always well organized, save a lot of physical space (paperless), easy to store, and easy retrieves it anytime.

4. Helps the Clover Company to make decision

With a lot of easily generated report from the new system, now the company can use less effort to prepare materials and information needed to conduct a review and evaluation about the company performance. For example, the company can use the new system to produce a report about the kind of events ordered by customers in last 6 months, and then from this report the management team of the company can make decision about where to improve the company’s business and how to do it.

5. Provide a better financial report, and its easier to access

In order to help the financial department of the Clover Company, the new system will also benefits the financial company by helping them to do their job on writing financial records and produce the company’s financial report. It’s easier and faster to use the new system to produce a financial report compared to the current system that produce financial report by manually writes it on a piece of paper that takes a quite long time.

6. Easier to educate the customers and give information that they need

When a customer wants to make an order, there are many choices that he/she has to make. The choice is like what is the type of the event that he/she wants, when is the event date, and the widest option is on which affiliate company that the customer wants to use for the event. For example there are some food supplier company affiliated with the Clover Company, the current system will require a staff to explain each company choice to the customer, this process takes long time and big effort. With the new system, the customer can see the information about each choice on the website itself, so the company doesn’t need a staff just to describe and explain each choice to the customer. This will safe time and effort, thus increase productivity.

7. Inspiring customer

The new system will give news about the latest events that is organized by the Company; this news will give inspiration for the customer to make their choice. This will make the customers happier with the company and find that the company’s website is helpful for them. All of these things can lead to more loyal customers.

8. Synchronized Schedule with affiliate companies

The new system allows the Clover Company to get up to date information from affiliated companies about their availability on certain dates. This synchronized schedule between the Clover Company and its affiliate companies is an important benefit because it saves a lot of communication cost, time, and effort.

9. Advertise the company

With the new system’s internet based platform, it can help the company to advertise its business to a wider society, virtually all Internet users in the world. This is also one of crucial part that the new system will take. The website should have an interface and information that are interesting enough to attract new customers to use the company’s service.

10. Reduce cost

After all the benefits mentioned above, the final benefit that the company will get from the new system is reduced operational cost. The new system will reduce costs like administration cost to buy papers and pen, telephone cost, cost for extra staff, etc.

So, beside the intangible benefits, the new system will also have real financial benefit (tangible benefit).

VII. Initial Specification

The system is an online system with web pages programmed using PHP and HTML as the front-end and a mySQL database as the back-end. The system will have 4 main areas. They are:

A.  Public Area that can be accessed and viewed by all Internet users.

B.  Customer Area for registered customer with proper user id and password.

C.  Affiliate Company Area for affiliate companies.

D.  Administrator Area that used by the Clover Company’s staffs.

A. Public Area

Public Area is part of the website that can be accessed and viewed by all Internet users because there is no need to enter password or register to see this part. This is the part of the website that will be first displayed. This part also plays an important role on the company’s publication in order to attract new customers.

A.1. Up to date News

The most recent news about the company will always provided in the website to give customers more knowledge about the company and its services and also attracts new customers.

A.2. Company Profile

Provides a description about the company, to give the customer better understanding about the company and its businesses.

A.3. Company’s service description

This is a room for the company to promote all kinds of services that it offers to the public. It will have description about the company’s service, list of offered services and also promotion if any.

A.4. Company’s contact

This part provides a detailed contact and also the office address of the company in case if someone wants to contact the company directly.

A.5. FAQ (Frequently Asked Question)

This is a list of frequently asked question and its answer to help the user to get answer for common questions.

A.6. Sitemap

Sitemap is provided in this website to make it easier for the user to understand the structure of the website and jumps quickly from one page to another page.

A.7. Customer Registration

Customer registration page provides a registration form for customer who wants to use the company’s service so they can have a user id and password to login to the system and use more functionality of the system.

A.8. Customer Login

Customer login page is where a registered customer can use his/her user id and password to login to the customer area.

A.9. Affiliate Company Login

Affiliate company login is where a person from an affiliate company can login using his/her user id and password to access the affiliate company area.

B. Customer Area

After a registered customer successfully login from customer login page, he/she can now access the customer area.

B.1. User Profile Module

Here the customer can see the information that he/she entered in the registration form earlier. The customer can do modifications to some details of his/her personal particular here (e.g. update phone number or change e-mail address).

B.2. Order Placing Module

Customer can place their order here, including all the options and specification of the order such as event type, date, place, entertainment type, documentation type, etc.

B.3. Online Payment Module

This module allows customers to make an online payment for their order. After a customer make payment, it will give an online receipt that can be printed by the customer. If there is more payment to be made, the module will remind the customer about

B.4. Order Status Tracking Module

The customer can use this module to check the progress status of their order. For example, the customer can see if the place for the event has been booked or not, or if there is any changes to one of the specification/detail.

B.5. Change Order Specification

Customer can use this module to change the specification and detail of the order.

B.6. Affiliate Companies Profiles

Customers need to choose which affiliate company that he/she wants to use when placing order. For example company A for food supplier, company G for documentation, and company L for the printing of flyers. To decide which affiliate company to choose, the customer will be able to read a description and profile of each affiliate company.

B.7. Customer Feedback Module

B.8. Help / User Guide

The help and user guide provides a clear instruction about how to use the system. This feature will assist the system user to be more familiar with the functions and navigations in the system.

C. Affiliate Company Area

This affiliate company area is a special part of the system for the affiliate companies of the Clover Company, so the synchronization between the Clover Company and its affiliate companies can be done easier with less effort.

C.1. User Profile Module

The user profile module is similar with the user profile module in customer area. It displays the affiliate company’s detail information and can be updated if there are any changes.

C.2. Update Availability Schedule

The affiliate companies can use this module to update their availability date. For example, Company A that provide event documentation service enter that it is available on 20 August 2008, then when a customer that want to order for an event on that date, the customer will see company A is in the option and can be chosen.

C.3. Booking Status Module

This module will be a reminder for an affiliate company to remind it about what are the dates that it is booked. And then the affiliate company can confirm the booking if they can do it. A confirmed booking from an affiliate company will update the order status that can be checked by the customer via order status tracking module.

C.4. Feedback Module

An affiliate company can give feedback to the Clover Company if they see that there is a room for improvements. Then the submitted feedback can be followed up by the management team of the Clover Company.

C.5. Help / User Guide

The help and user guide provides a clear instruction about how to use the system. This feature will assist the system user to be more familiar with the functions and navigations in the system.

D. Administrator Area

Administrator area is used by internal staff of the Clover Company. It requires user id and password to enter this area. But for security sake, there is no visible interface to login to this area from the home page of the website. If a staff wants to login, he/she must type a special address to open the login page to the administrator area.

D.1. Order Management Module

This module provides ability for the Clover Company’s staff to manage all the orders from the customers. The staff can see each order detail and update the order preparation progress when it’s necessary. The Clover Company can tell the customer if there is any change to the order specification through this module.

D.2. Customer Management Module

The company can manage its customer from this module. The company can use this module to check for customer’s data and information, and also read customer’s feedback or send e-mail to a customer to inform the customer if there is something important happen.

D.3. Affiliate Company Management Module

The availability schedule from each affiliate company can be checked using this module. The Clover Company also can check which companies available are for a certain date. Additionally, the Clover Company can check the status of an affiliate company about how many order that request its service, whether all the request have been confirmed, etc. The Clover Company also can send e-mail to any affiliate company if there is something urgent to ask.

D.4. Company Schedule and Reminder

It helps the Clover Company to view its schedule and also upcoming events and order.

D.5. Report Generator Module

This module is used generate many kind of reports from the system database. It can produce reports like customer data report, affiliate companies report, report about the orders received in a certain period, etc. These reports can be used for an onscreen viewing only or printed to be used as meeting materials.

D.6. Finance Report Module

The company’s finance department can use this module to generate the company’s financial report. It has many categories of what period of time should the report show and also report for general condition or report on per case basis (e.g. report for each order).

D.7. Database

The system’s database is used to store all the data needed by the company. It stores customer data, affiliate company data, orders data, transaction data, and financial data. The security of the database is ensured by protecting it using password so it will prevent unauthorized person to access the information inside the database.

D.8. Help / User Guide

The help and user guide provides a clear instruction about how to use the system. This feature will assist the system user to be more familiar with the functions and navigations in the system.

VIII. Work Distribution

To develop this system, we have a developer team that consist of three experienced person that is highly motivated and have adequate skill to carry out this project in time and satisfy the system’s specification.

The team consists of:

1.      System Analyst

2.      Programmer

3.      Database Designer/Administrator

Here is a bit description of each team member:

1. System Analyst

Our system analyst is David. He has many years of experience in this field. He is a highly self-motivated person with good communication skills. In this project, he will meet our customer to identify problem suffered by the customer’s current system. Beside that, David will perform analysis to the current system for clearly understand workflow of the current system, current system’s features, its drawback and constraints. This information will allow our team to decide what improvement should be made in the new system. To achieve this objective, David will have to gather information from different method such as reviewing current system’s document, interviewing involved staff person, and observing current system’s work activities. After gathering sufficient information, he will perform feasibility study to examine the acceptance of the new system. This will include few factor such as current technology available, user’s operating skills and customer’s budget. David also makes decision together with other team member in determine new system specification. The team member will list out any hardware and software needed in the new system. Based on gathered information, David will perform the cost benefit analysis. He will list out what benefits will the new system bring, and the cost of implementing new system. David has to prepare proposal for present our new system concept to customer. At the system implementing and evaluation stages, David will conduct with other team member to evaluate the newly implemented system. Together, they will analyze the new system performance, user acceptance and customer satisfaction, and then produce a system review report.

2. Programmer

Our team programmer is Thomas. He has enough experience in this field. Master in some programming language makes him able to fulfill each project objective in most economic and creative ways. In this project, he will determine the specification of the new system along with other team member. As usual, he will select the best tools like pseudo code, flow chart and CASE tools to planning how to design the new system. Thomas also has to choose suitable programming language to construct the new system and meets document requirements. After selecting desired programming language, the entire team member will begin to code the new system. During system development phase, Thomas will document the pseudo code, flow chart, system-operating manual, and procedures in the system document. When the system is developed, Thomas will perform a system test to the new system along with database administrator. They will test the new system with available test data and also live test data provided by the customer. The new system will not be implemented until it is 100% functional and free from any kind of errors. If an error is occurred, Thomas will revise the new system according to the detected error. Thomas will play his role when the system is implemented. First, he will implement the system with other team member. If training is conducted, he will responsible for training the user based on the system-operating manual. While the system is fully operated at customer site, Thomas and other team member will conduct a system review on the implemented system.

3. Database Designer/Administrator

Our team’s Database Designer/Administrator is Keith. He has adequate education and experience in this field. In this project, Keith will work with other team member to determine system specification. Then, he will plan the database with the aid of database development tools such as data flow diagram, data dictionary and decision tree. With the aid of those tools, he will decide the how many database is needed, relationship between each database, data integrity control etc. Keith needs to choose suitable database programming language to use in this project. Then, he will construct the database with the selected language. Beside that, he will join other team member to codes the system. While the system development in progress, Keith will help Thomas to prepare the system document. He needs to make the database documentation which recording the database structure, coding, database maintaining procedure. When the system is completed, he will join other team member to perform system test to the new system. At the system implementing and evaluation phase, Keith will review the new system with other team member.

IX. Cost Benefit Analysis

X. Expected Benefits of the New System (Intangible)

Payback period for old system :

Cost of Project = 8500

Annual Cash Inflow   = Total Return/5

= 11500/5

= 2300

Payback Period                       = 8500/2300

= 3.69 years

Because the company does not use any system in the old system so the payback period for old system is 0 year.

Payback period for new system :

Cost of Project = 17500

Annual Cash Inflow   = Total Return/5

= 23900/5

= 4780

Payback Period                       = 17500/4780

= 3.66 years

XI. Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI = [Total Benefit-Total Cost] / Total Cost

Old System:

ROI     = [11500-8500] / 8500

= 35%

New System:

ROI     = [23900-17500] / 17500

= 36.57%

XII. Hardware specification

The minimum hardware specification to operate this system is:

1.      Intel Pentium IV processor or better

2.      Minimum 512 Mb RAM

3.      Color Monitor

4.      Keyboard

5.      Mouse with scroll button

6.      160 GB hard disk

7.      DSL Internet connection

8.      Laser Printer or Dot Matrix Printer

For the web server itself, we will host the website on another commercial web server, so we don’t need to buy the expensive web server computer for the company.

XIII. Software Requirements

Ø  Development Software

The software that is used to develop this new system:

1.      Notepad ++

2.      PHP editor

3.      PHP (Personal Home Page)

4.      phpMyAdmin

5.      FileZilla

6.      Apache HTTP server

7.      MySQL

8.      Adobe Dreamweaver

9.      Adobe Photoshop

10.  Core FTP

Ø  Operational Software

The minimum requirement of the software to operate the system:

1.      Windows XP or Windows Vista

2.      Internet Browser (Mozilla Firefox v.2 or Internet Explorer 7)

XIV. Gantt Chart

XV. Conclusion

In Conclusion, we can conclude that the Clover Company needs to solve the problems and limitations in its business that is caused by using the current system. Developing a new system is the answer to eliminate all the problems and limitations of the current system. The new system will be an online based system with PHP and HTML as the front end, and a mySQL database as the back-end. The new system will be able to increase the company’s business productivity, save money, and attract new customers. So, the new system will play a crucial part for the company when it is implemented.

Feel free to ask me about this module using the comment section below.

Coming next, I will post my old project analysis documentation for this module.

Stay tuned! you can subscribe to my blog’s feed by clicking here so you won’t miss when the new post is published

This is the post for C2006 Project: System Development. Maybe some of you has been waiting for it.

First of all, I would like start by describing this Module (C2006), what are you expected to do and what are the challenges and pitfalls that you should avoid in order to succeed in this module.

The Module

in C2006, each student is required to form a group of three (mostly) students. This group is tasked to develop a computer system that solve a problem. The problem can be a virtual problem as long as it is reasonable. So you can think of something or a system that your group wants to create (i.e. Video Rental System, School Registration System, etc.) You are free to choose what system that your group want to create and also what programming language that you want to use. But I suggest that you consult all your decision with the module leader in order to get his/her approval.

Unlike other module that require you to submit just one or two documents, in this module you will need to submit several documents such as:

1. Project Proposal
2. Analysis Documentation
3. Design Documentation
4. Final Documentation

These are the major documents that you need to submit for this module. Each document has its own portion to your final mark, so make sure you do your best for each of it.

Things to Keep in Mind

Here are several things that you would like to keep in mind in doing this module:

1. This is a group project, your teammate is very important, you cannot finish this module well if your team got broken. So, solve each problem between your group’s members as soon as possible. In the end teamwork and leadership is one of the thing that you will learn from this module.
2. Avoid delay in doing the documentations, this project span over two terms but you get a deadline to submit each of the documentations. So try your best to follow this deadline.
3. Start to learn the programming language early. The programming language that you choose for your project may be a totally new for you. so, ask one or two member to learn this programming language from the first term of the module, so you will be ready to write the system codes in the second term, otherwise you wont have enough time if you just start to learn the programming language in the second term.

In the next posts, I will upload my old documentations for this module (Proposal, Analysis, Design, and Final Documentation) for your reference. Please note that I do this Module in 2008, so maybe the module has been modified now, use it for your reference only.

Feel free to ask me about this module using the comment section below.

Coming next, I will post my old proposal for this module.

Stay tuned! you can subscribe to my blog’s feed by clicking here so you won’t miss when the new post is published

Its been a long time since my last post. And many people has asked me to post about the C2006 Project System Development.

As I promised, I will start to update this blog with new posts starting this February 2010.

My first update will be a post about C2006 Project: System Development.

Stay Tuned

Thomas S

This is the assignment of C2028 Database Management System that I do in Term 3 2008 in my IADIC (International Advanced Diploma in Computing) course from Informatics Computer School Singapore.

This module talks about many factors of a Database system. And this assignment focuses on the Normalization process.

So, basically this assignment ask us to design a database for a library using ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram), then do the normalization process to the designed database, we go from first normal form until the third normal form.

Here is the assignment question:

You are to develop a Library database system.

(i)    Candidates must provide a description of current business activities and operations, a list of Business Rules.
(ii)    Design and derive the following from the above system:
•    Identify of objects – Entities, Relationship and Attributes
•    Identify and include Primary Keys.
•    Normalization the relationship (At least in 3NF).
•    Draw Final ER Diagram.

My Answer:

In this assignment, I will develop a database system for a library. The database developed here will be built in a way that makes it suitable to support the operation of a library. So we need to identify the environment for the database (Library’s business) and identify all the entities and relationships that is needed to support the library, by doing it that way we can make sure that the database that we develop for the library will be suitable and able to support the library’s operation and management. There are two main parts in this assignment. The first part that describe more on the library’s business, and the second part that explain more on the library database itself.

In the first part, we will discuss about the business activities, operations, and business rules of the library itself. The database that we build for the library must be suitable for the library’s business so it can support the library effectively, that is why we need to identify the particular library’s business activities, operations, and business rules.

The second part of this assignment will explain technical side of the library’s database. I will try to identify what are the entities are there in the library’s system, how the relationships between those entities, and what are attributes that belong to each entity.  After identifying these things, then I will move on to identify the primary key field for each table that is present in the library database. Before commencing to draw the final Entity Relationship diagram, we will try to observe if there is any relationship that can be normalized, if so then we will do all the necessary relationship normalization. Finally, I will draw the final Entity Relationship diagram for this library database system.

The main business activity of the library is manages its collection of books, accept new membership registration, lending books to members, handling book reservation, and return of borrowed book.

The library needs to keep tracks of so many records. It has its list of books that need to be sorted in a way that will make it easy for someone to search for a book’s information. It also needs to do many data management for its member, books, and staffs. The library has many members, a vast collection of books, and many staffs with different positions such as librarian, security guard, cleaning staff, administration staffs, etc. For these reason, the library need a library database system that will support its daily operation.

In this section, I will list some of the business rules from the library that is important for the development of the library’s database system.

II.c.1. Member Rules

ü  A person acquires library membership after he/she fills a form that tells his particular information such as name, address, e-mail, etc.

ü  A member can borrow more than one book at a time by bringing the book to a librarian that is in duty who will process the borrowing process.

ü  Each member can borrow book for maximum of 40 (forty) days.

ü  Library member may do a book reservation by filling a form and then put the form in the reservation box.

II.c.2. Book Management Rules

ü  Each library book is given a unique book identification number.

ü  A member may not borrow book that status is a reference book.

ü  The entire book in the library must be recorded for its title, author, publisher, number of pages, ISBN, etc.

ü  Each book in the library is given a genre that will make it easier for people to have a brief image about what is the book’s theme.

II.c.3. Staff Rules

ü  Each staff’s personal particular must be recorded.

ü  Only staff with librarian position may facilitate a library member to borrow a book.

ü  The salary of the staff is not defined by the position.

ü  Some staff can be assigned as a supervisor for another library staff.

We will try to identify what are the objects that are needed in this library’s database system. These objects comprise of Entities, Relationship, and Attributes for each entity.

Entity is the main object where it can represent a person, a place, an event, or a specific thing that is needed by the library. For example, we may have library member or book as an entity in a library database. Entity is the main object that most likely will become a table in a relational database system. So, if we have an entity called member, most likely we will have a table called member also in our database.

One entity can have many attributes. Attributes is the characteristic or we can also say that attribute is the property of an entity. For example, if we have an entity called book we may have some attributes for this entity such as book name, description, ISBN (International Standard Book Number), etc.

Relationship shows how one entity relates to another entity in the database system. There are many kinds of relationship.

Beside the explanation that I give about Entity in the previous section, there are also few other views of what an entity is. CR Vanslyke (knol, 2008) suggests that entity is a thing where the database will store the data. Therefore, in our developed database, we should be able to store data into entity that we found here.

Some things we can make as entity are:

a.       Things or items that is countable.

b.      Events or transactions, for example book borrowing.

c.       People that are involved in the system

Now, we will look at what are the entities that we going to have in this library database system. We will only have what is important in the library database system to be the entity. Entities that we have here are:

1. Member
2. Staff
3. Book

Member, Staff, and Book are three entities that are needed by this library database system.

The library will need to record its member that is why we have member as one of the entity. Additionally, the library can have many staffs including librarian, security officer, and so on, therefore, it is also important to have a record of the library staffs inside the staff entity. Finally, book is the main asset to a library, so definitely we will need to store data about all the library’s books.

Here I will try to identify what are the attributes for the three entities (Member, Staff, and Book) that we have identified in the previous section.

Attributes is the characteristic of our three entities. Mike Chapple (About.com, 2008) suggest that in database environment attributes, also known as field or column, is a single data item that is associated to each database entity.

Now, lets look at what are the attributes for each of our three entities:

1.      Member

2.      Staff

3.      Book

The attributes that we will assign to each entity will be based on what data that we need to know from an entity. Additionally, all the attributes that I assigned to each entity here is considered as condition before any normalization process is done.

Attributes for each entity:

1. Member

a.       member_id

b.      name

c.       gender

d.      date_of_birth

e.       address

f.       phone_no

g.      e-mail

h.      borrow_id – (multivalued attribute)

i.        book_borrowed – (multivalued attribute)

j.        borrow_date – (multivalued attribute)

k.      librarian_serve – (multivalued attribute)

l.        book_duedate – (multivalued attribute)

m.    return date – (multivalued attribute)

n.      reservation_id – (multivalued attribute)

o.      book_reserved – (multivalued attribute)

p.      reserve_date – (multivalued attribute)

2. Staff

a.       staff_id

b.      name

c.       gender

d.      date_of_birth

e.       address

f.       phone_no

g.      e-mail

h.      position

i.        salary

j.        Supervisor

3. Book

a.       book_id

b.      ISBN

c.       Title

d.      Author

e.       Publisher

f.       Publication_year

g.      Edition

h.      Pages

i.        Genre

j.        Genre_description

k.      Reference_book

That is all the attributes for each of our entity (Member, Staff, and Book). Of course this attributes refer to the condition before these entity attributes comes to the normalization process. We will do the normalization process in section III.c.

Relationship is a natural relation that is exist between entities in Entity Relationship Diagram, for example Member borrow Book (webfuse.cqu.edu.au, 2006).

There are some kinds of relationship degree: unary, binary, ternary, and n-ary relationship. Unary relationship is a relationship that involves only a single entity, or we can say that it is a relationship between an entity to itself. Binary relationship is a relationship that involves two different entities. Ternary relationship exists when the relationship involves three different entities. Finally, when we have a relationship with more than three entities involved, we call this kind of relationship as n-ary relationship (CR Vanslyke, 2008).

Now lets look at what relation that we have for our three entities that are Member, Staff, and Book. The relation that we will see here is the relation between entities before any normalization process is carried out.

Relations that we have between our entities here are:

1.      Borrow

2.      Reserve

3.      Supervises

That are the three relations that we have for our entities in this library database system. In the next section we will discuss more about each of these three relations.

1.      Borrow

Borrow is a ternary relationship involving the three entities Member, Book, and Staff. I will give a simple ERD (Entity Relationship Diagram) to show the borrow relationship.

Note: – M means multivalued attribute

The above ERD shows how the relations “borrow” relate all the three entities Member, Staff, and Book together. In a glance, this relation means that the library’s member can borrow books from the library facilitated by the library’s staff (librarian).

Now lets take a look at the signs at the relationship line there in the ERD. We can see that there are some signs like single line, circle, and crowfoot (/|\), these symbols represents the cardinality of the relation. The symbol closer to the entity is called as the maximum cardinality while the symbol next to it is called as the minimum cardinality. Maximum cardinality is the maximum number of entity instances that can be related to an entity. Minimum cardinality means the minimum number of instances that can be related to an entity. The circle symbol means zero or null, the line symbol means one, and the crowfoot symbol means many.

Using the cardinality symbol’s meaning we can get more information for “borrow” relation that is in the above ERD.

First, let us look at the Book entity. There is a circle symbol as the minimum cardinality and a crowfoot symbol as the maximum cardinality. It means that each of the library member can borrow minimum no books (not borrow anything) and also allowed to borrow more than one books.

Second, let us look at the Staff entity. There is a line symbol for both the minimum and maximum cardinality. This means that for each book borrowing events there must be minimum and maximum one staff (librarian) that facilitate the member to borrow the book.

Finally, let us look at the Member entity. We can see that there is a circle symbol as the minimum cardinality and a line symbol as the maximum cardinality. This means that each book in the library can be borrowed by no one or can be borrowed by maximum one member at a time.

2.      Reserve

Reserve is a binary relationship between Member entity and Book entity.

Below is the Entity Relationship Diagram for the “reserve” relation.

Note: – M means multivalued attribute

The above ERD shows how Member entity and Book entity is related with the “reserve” relationship. This relation is needed to record the books reserved by the customer. Let us look at the cardinality of this relationship.

First, the cardinality symbols for the Book entity. There is a circle symbol as the minimum cardinality and a crowfoot symbol as the maximum cardinality. It tells that a library member can reserve no book or a member can return one or more than one book.

Second, the cardinality symbols for the Member entity. There is a circle symbol as the minimum cardinality and a crowfoot symbol as the maximum cardinality. It tells us that there can be no library member reserve a book (in case that no one reserve any book from the library) and also one library book can be reserved by many library members at a time.

3.      Supervises

Supervise is a unary relationship that relates Staff entity with itself. This relation happen as a consequence that there is many job positions for the library staff’s and there are some library staffs that supervises the job of another library staff.

Below is the Entity Relationship Diagram for the “supervises” relation.

The above ERD shows how the unary relationship “supervises” relates the staff entity to itself. This relation will show who supervises who in the library’s staff. Now let us look at this relation with its cardinality.

First, let us look at the two cardinality symbols below the staff entity in the above ERD. We can see that there is a circle symbol for the minimum cardinality and a crowfoot symbol for the maximum cardinality. From these symbol we can get information that a library staff may supervises a minimum of no other library staff, or he/she can supervises many other library staffs.

Second, let us look at the cardinality symbols at the right side of the Staff entity. We can see that there is a circle symbol for the minimum cardinality and a line symbol for the maximum cardinality. The information that we can derive from these two symbols is that a library staff can have no supervisor (in case that he/she have the highest staff position in the library) or a maximum of one supervisor for each library staff.

In conclusion, we have three kinds of relationship for our three entities (Member, Staff, Book). These relationships are “borrow” which is a ternary relationship involving all the three entities, “reserve” which is a binary relationship relating the member and the book entity, and also “supervises” which is a binary relationship relating the staff entity to itself. These relation is for the library database system before any normalization process is done. We will do the normalization process in section III.c.

After we identify the Entities, Attributes, and Relationships among the entities in the previous section, I will try to identify the primary keys for each of the entity that we have here in our library database system.

Primary key is an attribute or combination of it that will uniquely define each of the entity’s instances. There should be no two instances with a same primary key attribute. Using a primary key, we can guarantee that there will be no duplicate instance for each of our entity. Therefore, each of the entity that we define in the previous section must have a primary key.

When selecting an attribute to be a primary key, we need to select an attribute that have no chance of having duplicate value. Below are some tables that show the entities that we have in this library database system together with its attribute and primary key attribute (bold and underscored attribute). These primary keys are before any relationship normalization is done.

Above is the table showing Member entity and its attributes. We can see that the member_id attribute is defined as the primary key. The reason why I choose member_id as the primary key for this entity is because we can assign a unique member id for each of the library’s  member, so it will guarantee that we would not have any duplicate value in this attribute. Why other attribute does not qualify to be the primary key for this entity? It is because other attributes have a high chance to have more than one value same value.

Above is the table showing Staff entity and its attributes. We can see that the staff_id attribute is defined as the primary key. The reason why I choose staff_id as the primary key for this entity is because we can assign a unique staff id for each of the library’s  staff, so it will guarantee that we would not have any duplicate value in this attribute.

Above is the table showing Book entity and its attributes. We can see that the book_id and ISBN attribute is defined as the primary key. The reason why I choose book_id and ISBN as the primary key for this entity is because we can assign a unique book id for each of the library’s  book and also different book have a different ISBN, so it will guarantee that we would not have any duplicate value in these two attributes.

In conclusion, in this section we have identified a primary key attribute for each of the entity that we have. We have member_id attribute as the primary key for the Member entity, we have staff_id attribute as the primary key for Staff entity, and book_id as the primary key for the Book entity. These primary key is before any relationship normalization, after some relationship normalization there is a chance that we will have more primary keys. We will do the normalization process in section III.c.

In this section, we will perform some normalization process for our three entities which are Member, Staff, and Book. In normalization, we will break down the complex entity and its relationship into smaller parts that is easier to understand and closer to the entities in the real world.

Tony Marston (tonymarston.co.uk, 2004) suggest that normalization  is concerned with things like:

ü  Identify the relationships between entity’s attribute

ü  Combine some attributes to make a new relation

ü  Combine relations to form a database

While the benefits of normalization are:

ü  Eliminate redundancy

ü  Make the model closer to the entity, process, and relationship in real world

ü  Make a flexible data structure

There are three normalized form that we want to achieve, those are 1^st Normal Form (1NF), 2^nd Normal Form (2NF), and 3^rd Normal Form (3NF). The following sections will discuss each transformation for our library database system to its 1NF, 2NF, and 3NF.

Normal Form (1NF)

Before we do any normalization, we consider our library database system is in un-normalized form (UNF). To make our library database system to be in the first normal form (1NF), what we will need to do is to remove any repeating groups (multivalued attributes) and define all the necessary key attributes after removal of the repeating groups.

Before we do any normalization process to make our library database system to be in the first normal form (1NF), I would like to give an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for the current un-normalized form:

Note: - M means multivalued attribute and - PK means Primary Key

III.c.1.i. Member Entity

As we can see in the ERD of the un-normalized library database system, there are many attributes in Member entity that is a multivalued attribute. They are borrow_id, book_borrowed, borrow_date, librarian_serve, book_duedate, return date, reserve_id, book_reserved, and reserve_date.

These multivalued attributes is intended to store data about library member’s book borrowing and book reserving activity. What is the book borrowing id (borrow_id), what book is borrowed by a member (book_borrowed), when he/she borrow it (borrow_date), who is the librarian who process the borrowing process (librarian_serve), when is the due date of the book (book_duedate), and when he/she actually return the book (return_date). For the book reservation activity, we have reserve_id that show the reservation id, book_reserved that store data about the reserved book, and reserve_date that shows when is the reservation is made. In order to eliminate these repeating groups, I will introduce the relation “borrow” and the relation “reserve” as a new table/entity.

In the new “borrow” entity, we will rename book_borrowed attribute to book_id and then we also rename librarian_serve attribute to staff_id. This is because the book that is borrowed by a library member can be identified by the book_id attribute as in the Book entity, and the librarian who serve the borrowing process can be identified by the staff_id taken from the Staff entity. The other attribute that we will put in the new “borrow” entity are member_id, borrow_date, book_duedate, and return_date. The primary key of this entity will be the borrow_id attribute.

For the new “reserve” entity, we will rename the book­­_reserved attribute to book_id taken from Book entity. The primary key will be the reservation_id and we also include the reserve_date attribute as one of the attribute in this entity.

Therefore, now we have removed all the repeating groups in the Member entity.

III.c.1.ii. Book Entity

In the Book entity, there is no attribute with multiple value, that means that there is no repeating group in this entity, therefore no modification need to be made in this entity to make it in the 1NF.

III.c.1.iii. Staff Entity

In the Staff entity, there is no attribute with multiple value, that means that there is no repeating group in this entity, therefore no modification need to be made in this entity to make it in the 1NF.

The Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) for the first normal form (1NF) is as follow:

1^st Normal Form ERD. Note: - PK means primary key.

Normal Form (2NF)

The second step of our normalization process is to make our library database system to its second Normal Form (2NF).

We identify that a relation is in the second Normal Form (2NF) if the relation satisfy two conditions. First, the relation must be in the 1NF (First Normal Form). Second, there are no partial dependencies, or we can say that the entire attribute in the entity is functionally dependent on the primary key only.

Since we have made our library database system’s relation to its first normal form (1NF) in the previous section, now we just need to identify the functional dependency from each of the entity that we have, and try to find if there is any partial dependency.

III.c.2.i. Member Entity

The primary key in Member entity is member_id

The functional dependency in this entity is:

member_id – - >     name, gender, date_of_birth, address, phone_no, e-mail

Therefore, there is no partial dependency in this entity’s attributes.

III.c.2.ii. Staff Entity

The primary key in Staff entity is staff_id

The functional dependency in this entity is:

staff_id – - >     name, gender, date_of_birth, address, phone_no, e-mail,

position, salary, supervisor

Therefore, there is no partial dependency in this entity’s attributes.

III.c.2.iii. Borrow Entity

The primary key in Borrow entity is borrow_id

The functional dependency in this entity is:

borrow_id – - >     member_id, staff_id, book_id, borrow_date, book_duedate,

return_date

Therefore, there is no partial dependency in this entity’s attributes.

III.c.2.iv. Reserve Entity

The primary key in Reserve entity is reservation_id

The functional dependency in this entity is:

reservation_id – - >     book_id, reserve_date

Therefore, there is no partial dependency in this entity’s attributes.

III.c.2.v. Book Entity

The primary key in Book entity is book_id and ISBN

The functional dependency in this entity is:

(book_id, ISBN)        – - >     title, author, publisher, publication_year, edition, pages,

Genre, Genre_description, Reference_book

ISBN – - >     title, author, publisher, publication_year, edition, pages,

Genre, Genre_description, Reference_book

We can see here that there is a partial dependency in this entity. The attributes entity is only partially dependent on the key book_id and ISBN. Actually the attributes is only fully functionally dependent to ISBN. This case happen because the library can have more than one book with the same title, ISBN, etc. but the library have to differentiate this kind of books. That is why we have the book_id as an attribute here since there are more than one book with the same ISBN (In case that these book is the same book with same title, author, edition, etc.) but we can assign each book with a book_id that is unique for the library.

In order to solve this partial dependency, I will introduce a new entity called “Book_info” that contain all the attributes of the Book entity except the book_id attribute. The primary key of this entity is the ISBN attribute. The attributes of Book_info entity and the new attribute of the Book entity is shown in the table below:

As we can see in the above tables, now the new Book_info entity have all the attributes of the Book entity except the book_id entity. The Book entity now has only two attributes with only one primary key (book_id). The functional dependency of the Book_info entity is as follows:

ISBN – - >     title, author, publisher, publication_year, edition, pages,

Genre, Genre_description, Reference_book

On the other hand, the functional dependency of the Book entity is:

book_id – - >     ISBN

The Entity Relationship Diagram for our library database system in its 2NF is

2^nd Normal Form ERD. Note: - PK means primary key

Normal Form (3NF)

After we normalized our relationship to its second Normal Form (2NF), now we will do our final normalization process to make it to its third Normal Form (3NF).

We can tell that a relation is in its third Normal Form (3NF) when the relation satisfies three conditions. First, the relation is in second Normal Form (2NF). Second, there is no transitive dependency exist between the entity’s attributes, it means that there should be no attribute that dependent to a non-key attribute. Third, all the attributes in the entity fully dependent on the primary key attribute (Tony Marston, 2004)

Since we have made our library database system’s relation to its second Normal Form (2NF) in the previous section, now we just need to try to find if there is any transitive dependency between the attribute in an entity.

Let’s look at our “Book_info” entity. The functional dependency of this entity is:

ISBN – - >     title, author, publisher, publication_year, edition, pages,

Genre, Genre_description, Reference_book

If we observe these attributes of “Book_info” entity, there is a transitive dependency where a non-key attribute that can be used to determine another attribute. These two attributes are Genre and Genre_description.

Genre - – >     Genre_description

In order to remove the transitive dependency in the Book_info entity, I will make a new entity called “Genre” that will have two attributes Genre and Genre_description with Genre as its key attribute. We will still have the Genre attribute in the Book_info entity but we will remove Genre_description attribute from the Book_info entity. The following tables show the Genre entity and Book_info entity with its attributes.

After we do this process, now there is no more transitive dependency that exist in our library database system. It also implies that all the attributes in each of entity that we have in this system is fully dependent on the primary key attribute only. This condition means that our library database system is already in its third Normal Form (3NF) and we do not need to do any normalization process anymore.

The Entity Relationship Diagram for our library database system in its 3NF is

3^rd Normal Form ERD. Note: - PK means primary key

We have done all the necessary normalization process in the previous section, now we already have the final Entity Relationship Diagram for our library database system. The final ERD is as follows

Final Entity Relationship Diagram for the library database system. Note: - PK means primary key

Finally, I want to write a conclusion for this assignment. In this assignment, I have design a library database system. I start from describing the business operations and activities of the library and listing the business rules of the library. These business rules of the library are important because I have to design the library database system to be able to support the rules.

In the chapter, I start my design with identifying the entities that I need for this library database system. In this process, I discovered three attributes that are Member, Staff, and Book. Then I continue with identifying the attributes for each entity and give relation between the entities. After this process is done, I continue with identifying the primary key attribute for each of the entity.

The next thing that I do is performing the normalization process for the library database system. There are three normalization steps which are transforming to First Normal Form (1NF), Second Normal Form (2NF), and finally to its Third Normal Form (3NF). The Third Normal Form is also resembles the Final Entity Relationship Diagram of the library database system. In this form, all the entity’s attributes is fully dependent on the key attribute. There is no partial dependency, transitive dependency, and repeating groups in this final ERD.  Therefore, I can conclude that the design of the library database system has been finished.

CR,Vanslyke, 2008, knol.google.com, “Conceptual Database Design“, Retrieved October 16, 2008, from http://knol.google.com/k/cr-vanslyke/conceptual-database-design/1fwdlprfh17di/2#

Mike, Chapple, 2008, about.com, “Attribute“, Retrieved October 16, 2008, from http://databases.about.com/cs/specificproducts/g/attribute.htm

Mike, Chapple, 2008, about.com, “Primary Key Definition“, Retrieved October 17, 2008, from http://databases.about.com/cs/administration/g/primarykey.htm

“Developing Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs)“, 2006, Retrieved October 17, 2008, from http://webfuse.cqu.edu.au/Courses/2006/T2/COIS20025/Assessment/Item_2/Part_A_Resources/erd.pdf

Toni, Marston, 2004, “The Relational Data Model, Normalisation and Effective Database Design“, Retrieved October 18, 2008, from http://www.tonymarston.co.uk/php-mysql/database-design.html

Do you have any comment on this? maybe you have something to ask me or want to discuss with me about this?Or maybe you are IDIC student and taking this module also?
Feel free to use the comment box below (click here if you cannot see the comment box).

Coming next, I will post another IADIC assignment, C2006 Project: System Development

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Here I write the second post from IADIC assignment posting series. This time I will post my C2027 Information Management Module’s Assignment that I take during Term 3 2008 in Informatics Computer School Singapore.

C2027 Information Management is a module that emphasizes more on how to manage IT department and IT projects when you become an IT manager in a company. It’s quite different from the other modules I get in IADIC course but on the other hand it is also fun to learn things about how and what you should do if you are a manager in a IT Department

This Assignment is quite unique compared to the other IADIC assignment because it doesnt have any scenario. But it just asks us to do a research and write about CSF (Critical Success Factor) and Enterprise Analysis. We need to write about five main points.
those points are:

The points that we need to write about CSF and Enterprose Analysis are:

•    Provide a introduction to CSFs and explain the importance of critical success factors.
•    Discuss about the main benifits organisations can gain by having its own CSFs.
•    Compare CSFs with enterprise analysis.
•    Discuss the advantages of critical success factors over enterprise analysis.
•    Discuss the disadvantages of critical success factors over enterprise analysis.

and here are my answers:

In this chapter, I will introduce about what is Critical Success Factor (CSF) and try to explain about the importance of Critical Success Factor for an organisation.

The idea of CSF first appeared on Harvard Business Review in the year 1961 by RH Daniel. The main idea of Critical Success factor is simple. It is that each organization has some factors that critical for the success of the organization, if the organization’s objectives that are associated with these factors is not achieved, most likely the organization will fail. (Mike Morrison, 2008)

However, it was not so popular until a decade later a man called John F. Rockart from MIT’s Sloan School of Management build on Daniel’s idea and popularizes the idea of Critical Success Factor. The definition of CSF from Rockart’s perspective is that CSF is a limited number of areas from an organization that will ensure the organization will be competitive and success as long as these areas is satisfied. On the other hand, if the organization fails to satisfy these areas, then the organization will not get its desired performance. In conclusion, Rockart says that CSFs are the areas that need a careful and continuous attention from the organization’s management. (Mindtools.com, 2008)

After looking at the history, we can define CSFs as factors that are related strongly on the organizations missions and main goals. Critical Success Factors only focus on the most important areas from an organization. It shows what goals the organization wants to achieve and what factors that the particular organization needs to satisfy in order to achieve its goals.

CSFs is very important for the success of an organization, it also helps to keep the organization focused on what is important and helps everyone in the organization to move in the same direction together, but where do we get the Critical Success Factors for an organization? We get the Critical Success Factor of an organization as a result of some personal interviews with top managers in the organization. We get these managers about what area of activity that is important in order to achieve the organization’s goals. After we get the personal Critical Success Factors from these managers, we will proceed to analyze and then aggregate these individual Critical Success Factors in order to make an agreement on what are the critical success factors for the whole organization.

The number of Critical Success Factors in an organization should be limited between three to five factors only, because a small number of CSFs will make it always manageable and easy to be satisfied by the entire organization. Mike Morrison (Rapidbi.com, 2008) suggest that there are five different areas where we can use to derive the Critical Success Factors of an organization. These sources are:

1.      The industry

2.      The competitive strategy or industry position

3.      Environmental factors

4.      Temporal factors

5.      Managerial position

1.      The industry

The type of the organization’s industry will affect on the factors that is important for the organization to success in a particular industry.

2.      The competitive strategy or industry position

The position of an organization in the market and also its industry’s market target as well as the competition environment will affect the organizations CSF.

3.      Environmental factors

These things are the external factor that cannot be controlled by the organization but need to be considered, such as political change, change of government rules, etc.

4.      Temporal factors

This factor is based on a temporary organization’s needs. If there is any difficulties or barrier that holds the organization and need to be solved immediately, then it will define the organization’s CSF.

5.      Managerial position

The managerial position is also an important source of CSF if the CSF is considered from individual manager’s point of view. For example, manager in public relation department will have a customer relationship as one of his/her CSF.

Mainly, there are two benefits of an organization or company to have its own CSFs. We will discuss these two benefits and an example.

First, the benefit of a company having its own CSFs is the CSFs can help the company to focus only on the things that are important to the company. In another words, the company know what is important, what is less important, and what is not important for it. When a company can focus only on the important things, it can make a priority on what things need to be done first. This also helps the company to save its effort from doing unnecessary things.

Second, the benefit of a company with its own CSFs is that the company’s business will stay in track. Each company has its own business mission and goals, the CSFs will act as a guideline for the company’s operation so it will achieve its desired goals.

To be able to understand about what are the benefits of an organization having its own Critical Success Factor, let us consider the example of Calico Computer Consulting (bplans.com, 2008).

Calico Computer Consulting is a newly established company that aims to provide assistance about computer matters. Its objectives are:

1.      Provide a fast and reliable technical assistance to the local business and home computer users

2.      Establish the company quickly with minimum of debt and make it profitable in long term.

3.      Provide satisfying service to get loyal customer for stable income.

4.      Generate sufficient profit and grow the business in a manageable rate.

After looking at the objectives of Calico Computer Consulting, now we will need to identify what are the critical factors that will need to be satisfied to make Calico Computer Consulting become a successful company according to its objectives.

The Critical Success Factors of Calico Computer Consulting are:

1. Get the Company name out there

This CSF comes from the temporal source due to the fact that this company is a newly established company and not many people know about it. Secondly, this factor also helps the company to achieve its second objective.

2. Quick response time to customer

The need to provide a quick response to the customer comes from the competitiveness source, it complies with the first objective.

3. High Solution quality

This factor comes from the industry source. The business of computer consulting requires the company to deliver an accurate solution for any computer problem.

4. Make and maintain a good customer relationship

This factor is derived from the company’s goal to have loyal customers in order to make a stable and steady income.

From the sample above, we can see that the CSF of the company helps it to achieve its business goals by identifying what are the important factors that it need to satisfy in order to be successful. Now this company have a focus on what is important for them and have a guideline to keep their business in the right track.

Enterprise Analysis

In this chapter, we will try to compare two methods of establishing organization information requirement. These two methods are Enterprise Analysis and Critical Success Factor. I will try to explain these methods individually so we can see the difference between them.

III. a. Enterprise Analysis

Enterprise Analysis also known as business system planning is a kind of method to establish an organization’s information requirement. According to this method, an organization’s information requirement can be defined by looking at the entire organization in the areas of its function, data elements, process, and organizational unit. This method will help the organization to find out what are the key or main entities and attributes from an organization’s data.

The method to do an Enterprise Analysis is to gather a large amount of sample from many managers. We will then ask these managers many questions like where the source of their information is, how they make their decision, what data that they need, and what are their objectives. After we get these data samples, we will try to aggregate this big data into subunits, processes, data matrices, and functions. The data element organized to some logical groups of application. Logical application groups are data elements that support some related sets of some organizational processes.

III. b. Critical Success Factor

Critical Success Factor also known as Strategic Analysis is another kind of method to establish an organization’s information requirement. As described in chapter 1, CSFs is critical factors that is related to an organization’s strategic goals and mission, which will make the organization successful when all of the Critical Success Factors is satisfied.

If we do an Enterprise Analysis by collecting a big amount of sample data from many managers, we get an organization’s Critical Success Factor in a slightly different way. The process of generating Critical Success Factors doesn’t come from a huge sampling process, but it comes from personal interviews to some top managers in the particular organization. These managers are asked to think about the important area in the organization, that will produce some individual CSFs. Then, these Individual CSFs will be analysed and aggregated to produce the organization’s Critical Success Factors.

Now, as we have seen the definition and explanation of CSF and Enterprise Analysis individually, we can start to compare these two methods of establishing organization information requirement.

The first thing that we can compare is the way to perform Enterprise Analysis and Critical Success Factors. As I have explained in the definition of Critical Success Factor, CSF is made by gathering some manager’s individual CSF using interview, while Enterprise Analysis use sampling to gather a large amount of data from many top managers about how they get and use the information in their organization. The second difference is Enterprise Analysis need a lot of effort to analyse the huge sample data compared to small amount of individual CSFs gathered in CSF method.

These two methods do have a similarity. The similarity of these two method is that the result of both CSF and Enterprise Analysis is biased to the top management and not reach the entire level in the organization because these method only ask and get the data from the top managers only.

Enterprise Analysis

We have compared the two methods to establish an organization’s information requirement, CSF and Enterprise Analysis, in the previous chapter. Every organization can use any one of these two methods in order to find out and determine their information requirement. However, why organizations prefer to choose a method to another method? How these two methods give advantages to the organization? Moreover, are there any disadvantages of using one method over the other method? I will explain these issues in chapter IV and V in this assignment. In this chapter, we going to talk about the advantages that organization get when using Critical Success Factor rather than Enterprise Analysis.

When an organization decided to use CSF to determine their information requirement, the advantages that they will get are:

a.       Simple procedure and small data analysis effort

If the organization wants to determine their CSF, then the organization will just need to interview their managers and get the their individual CSFs, which may be just three to five factors per manager, analyse and aggregate these individual CSFs to get the organization’s CSF. The process is simple and there is only small data to analyze. The story will be different if they use Enterprise Analysis, as it will give the organization a huge amount of sample data from the managers to analyze, it will need a lot more effort.

b.      The organization know what factors are important for the business

Using the organization’s CSFs, now the organization will know what the factors that is important, need careful and extra attention in order to make it a successful organization. On the other hand, the organization will just get information about how they should process the information that they have without knowing what the information that is important if they choose the Enterprise Analysis.

c.       The CSF can deal with changing environment and needs

CSFs comes from manager’s thought about the organization’s current condition and what the organization need in meantime, so it can deal with the most actual organization’s need. For example, organization ABC is a newly established organization. The manager of organization ABC will think that one of the organization’s CSF should be to quickly build and grow the organization and introduce it to the market. After some years, maybe this CSF is no longer relevant and can be changed to suit the organization’s need. The organization will not get this advantage if they use the Enterprise Analysis because in Enterprise Analysis they analyze how the organization use its data and information in the past, not what information that the organization need now.

d.      The CSF can be used to develop a custom system

This is another advantage for using CSF method. The CSF method is unique to one organization. Therefore, when we use the organization’s CSF to develop a system like Decision Support System or Executive Support System, the result will be a system that is more customized and unique to the organization since each organization can have different CSF.

Besides the advantages, the disadvantages that an organization will suffer when using  CSF over Enterprise Analysis are:

a.       Cannot see a complete view about how the organization use data

When an organization uses CSF to determine their information requirement, they will miss out the analysis about what they do about their existing data and information. On the other hand, if the organization uses Enterprise Analysis, the sampling data from Enterprise Analysis will tell the organization about how they use their existing data and information. Enterprise Analysis also let them know where there is a gap of information within the organization. For example, an organization may always get some data or information during their daily business information that is never processed and used to be a useful information for the company. This kind of potentially useful but unprocessed data or information will be never discovered by using Critical Success Factor Method but will be detected in Enterprise Analysis because the managers is asked about all the information and data that they get during the sample data gathering process in Enterprise Analysis.

b.      Efficiency of information processing not guaranteed

This disadvantage is actually an implication from the previously mentioned disadvantage of using CSF method. Because the organization cannot get the analysis data about how they process the existing data and information that they have, they also do not know if actually they can improve the efficiency of their data processing. In Enterprise Analysis, the analysis result will help the organization to develop a common understanding about how they use the organization data and helps people in the organization to process the data and information that they have more efficiently.

c.       Cannot develop a system to start a massive change

As mentioned in the previous chapter, CSF is suitable to be used to develop an Executive Support System or a Decision Support System. These kinds of systems will support the management team in the organization to make decisions. The problem come when the company or organization need to make a massive change in the way the organization do its daily business. These two kinds of system won’t be able to support this need. However, if the organization choose to use Enterprise Analysis, they will have more complete information about how the organization should process its information, what are the key entities, and attributes in the organization. These kind of information is suitable for developing a new system for the company to do a massive change in the way the company/organization works.

d.      Misunderstandings of CSF may happen

In the process of interview, aggregation, and analysis of individual manager’s CSFs into the organization’s CSF, many misunderstanding may happen. First, there are no black and white rules on how to transform and aggregate individual CSFs into organization’s CSFs. So there is always a room for mistake in this process.  Second, the interviewer and interviewer may become confused in distinguishing individual and organization’s CSF.

bplans.com, 2008, “Calico Computer Consulting“, Retrieved October 21, 2008, from http://www.bplans.com/Sample_Business_Plans/Computer_Consulting_Repair_and_Reseller_Business_Plans/Computer_Consulting_Business_Plan/executive_summary_fc.cfm

Mike, Morrison, 2008, Rapidbi.com, “Critical Success Factors – Determine the CSFs for your company“, Retrieved October 20, 2008, from http://www.rapidbi.com/created/criticalsuccessfactors.html

Mindtools.com, 2008, “Critical Success Factors”, Retrieved October 20, 2008, from http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_80.htm

Wps.prenhall.com, 2008, “Establishing Organization Information Requirement“, Retrieved October 22, 2008, from http://wps.prenhall.com/wps/media/objects/5528/5661380/_LearningTracks/laudon_ch11_lt2.pdf

Do you have any comment on this? maybe you have something to ask me or want to discuss with me about this?Or maybe you are IDIC student and taking this module also?
Feel free to use the comment box below (click here if you cannot see the comment box).

Coming next, I will post another IADIC assignment, C2028 Database Management System

Stay tuned! you can subscribe to my blog’s feed by clicking here so you won’t miss when the new post is published

To begin the second series of IADIC assignments posting series, I will post the assignment of C2020 Computer Architecture module that I take in Term 3 2008.

This module teach about how the computer’s processor works technically and also things like pipelining, virtual memory, assembly language, memory organization, LAN, TCP IP, etc.

The assignment is quite short and maybe the shortest assingment for IADIC (International Advanced Diploma in Computing) module. It consist of three questions

here is the assignment questions:

The total mark of the assignment is 40 divided by these three questions:

Question 1.

A three address-format machine has 128 data bus channels and is able to accept 1000 different commands and access 120 different general purpose registers. Show clearly, in workings, the allocation of bits to the different fields of the Instruction registers. Give the total length of IR and the number of direct addressable locations.                        [7 marks]

Question 2.

Instruction Add [101] [102][103] adds number stored in address 101 to number in address 102 and then stores the results into address 103. Show clearly the fetch and execution steps.
Note: You may make assumption on the address that stores the instruction.                                                           [13 marks]

Question 3.

Given expression Y = M-N*A+B/R*C, provide the assembly codes for Zero, One, Two and Three address-format machines.                                [20 marks]

and here is my answer for these questions

Answer

II. Answer for Question 1

1. Three address format machine
2. Data bus width = 128 bits
3. Total accessible General Purpose Registers (GPR) = 120
4. Total acceptable commands    = 1000

No. of bits in GPR field         = 7       →        2⁷ = 128 > accessible General Purpose Registers

No. of bits in Opcode field     = 10     →        2¹⁰ = 1024 > acceptable commands

No. of bits in Operand field   = (DatabusWidth – opcode – GPR)/no.of Operand Field = (128 – 10 – 7)/3 = 37

Instruction Register Fields:

The total length of IR = 10 + 37 + 37 + 37 + 7 = 128

Number of direct addressable locations = 2^operand = 2³⁷ = 137438953472

III. Answer for Question 2

Fetch cycle:

Execution cycle:

IV. Answer for Question 3

Expression → Y = M-N*A+B/R*C

Do you have any comment on this? maybe you have something to ask me or want to discuss with me about this?Or maybe you are IDIC student and taking this module also?
Feel free to use the comment box below (click here if you cannot see the comment box).

Coming next, I will post another IADIC assignment, C2027 Information Management

Stay tuned! you can subscribe to my blog’s feed by clicking here so you won’t miss when the new post is published

Wah it was quite some time since my last post about IADIC (International Advanced Diploma in Computing) assignments. Have been quite busy these last few days (or should I say weeks? :p). But now I will start to post the second series of IADIC assignment posts. yay!!

So, basically now I will start posting the assingments of the IADIC modules that I take during the second term of the IADIC course in Informatics Computer School Singapore, it was in term 3 2008.

So, here are the modules assignments that I will post:

1. C2020 – Computer Architecture
2. C2027 – Information Management
3. C2006 – Project: System Development
4. C2028 – Database Management System

Yap, those are the modules that will be included in the second IADIC posting series. I will start to post the C2020 Computer Architecture assignment

Stay tuned! you can subscribe to my blog’s feed by clicking here so you won’t miss when the new post is published

This is the third and the last post for the first part of IADIC assignment series. This time I will post about the assignment from C2005 OOP in Java that I take in Term 2 2008. This module basically teach about how to make and use objects in Java in a very simple way, so don’t expect to get an advanced Java technique here as it is a very basic Java skill that is taught by this module.

The assignment that I get in Term 2 2008 asked me to make a simple program for an electronic shop.

here is the questions:
Part A ( Total 15 marks )

An electronic shop supposed to store information on electronic product to be sold. Each component  will contain id, brand name, price and other two members. This part requires you to write the class, declare the members, write the constructors, and methods of it.

Part B ( Total 25 marks )
This part requires you to make use of array to store the above information.
Add more features to the program in Part A with the following specifications:

i.    The program can display all the electronic information. ( 5 marks )
ii.    The program can store new electronic product inside the array.(  5 marks )
iii.    The program can search for electronic product information based on a given brand. ( 5 marks )
iv.    The program can update the available electronic information. ( 5 marks)
v.    One feature other than those stated in part B.  ( 5 marks )

What do you need to submit?

a)    softcopy of your program
b)    printed copy of your program
c)    printed documentation on testing of  your program

The answer

II. Program Listing
The program for part A is the “ElectronicShop.java”
(Click the following link to download and see the file)
electronicshop.java

The program for part B is the “ShopProgram.java”. This file is saved in the same folder with the previous file, ElectronicShop.java
(Click the following link to download and see the file)
shopprogram.java

III. Program Objectives

The objectives of this Electronic Shop program are:

a)      To help an electronic shop to organize and manage its electronic products

b)      To provide easier access for the shop assistant to display all available product

c)      To help the electronic shop search for a product detail in their store

d)     To make updating a product’s detail become easier

e)      To assist the Electronic Shop to sell its product

f)       To help the electronic shop manage how many items left in the stock

IV. Program Test Documentation

IV. a) Test Plan

IV. b) Test Case & Test Result

Before

The screenshot before the test is carried out here

After

Screenshot after the test action is executed here

IV. c) Test Log

REFERENCES

Shang Shin, javapassion.com, Retrieved on June 29, from http://www.javapassion.com/

Extra notes from me:

You may notice that the program is not perfect in validating input, it will crash and stop working when a wrong data type is entered. OF course actually you can fix this problem and make the program validate the input appropriately. But what I want to show here is that this module assignment really doesn’t care about this kind of factors, they just want the program to do the requested functions. But if you want to do more, the choice is always yours good luck!

Do you have any comment on this? maybe you have something to ask me or want to discuss with me about this?Or maybe you are IDIC student and taking this module also?
Feel free to use the comment box below (click here if you cannot see the comment box).

Coming next, I will post another IADIC assignments, I will start posting my second term modules in IADIC.

Stay tuned! you can subscribe to my blog’s feed by clicking here so you won’t miss when the new post is published