SEMINAR_REPORT -Model-View-Controller design architecture to develop web based Institutional repositories.THT

Model-View-Controller design architecture to
develop web based Institutional repositories: A tool for Information and knowledge sharing
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1. Introduction
In all scientific and academic research, publications are the most important form of
communication of research. The scientific work of the researchers or research institutes is
generally assessed by the quality of resulting research publications. To evaluate a researcher,
research group or an institution, it is important to maintain a database of research publications.
Therefore, need arises to develop institutional repository for maintaining information on
publications in an organized and accessible manner. An Institutional Repository (IR) is a new
method for capturing, collecting, managing, disseminating, and preserving scholarly works
created in digital form by the constituent members of an institution [1]. The Indian Council of
Agricultural Research (ICAR) is one of the largest National Agricultural Research Systems
(NARS) worldwide involved in agriculture research, education and extension having 5 deemed
to university and nearly 100 institutes dedicated to different aspects of agricultural research
(ICAR, 2014)[2]. Having the vast network of research facilities and the scientists working in
diverse disciplines, it is necessary for ICAR to develop a publication database for monitoring and
evaluating the quality of the research outputs through an objective assessment of the research
publications.
The existing software tools for information management of publications are not well suited for
evaluation purpose, particularly for agriculture research with interdisciplinary aspects. In some
scientific and academic areas, there are publication databases that cover their respective areas.
Furthermore, these publication databases usually permit search for publications of a particular
author, but do not have provisions for extracting complete publication statistics of scientists or
institute for the purpose of evaluation of performance. In agriculture sciences with
interdisciplinary aspects, publication information systems which may be appropriate for a
comprehensive evaluation of particular scientists or research team or institute are not readily
available. Keeping in view this, an exercise to develop an Institutional Repository (IR) for
maintaining, monitoring and evaluating the research communication output from the Directorate
of Rapeseed-Mustard Research (DRMR), which is mandated with the research and development
of rapeseed-mustard crop in India, and is one of the constituent institutes of ICAR.

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Since, the research publications are one of the important indicators of evaluation of quality
research and attract the research collaboration; therefore, to evaluate a researcher, research group
or an institution, it is important to maintain a database of research publications and
communications. After inception of DRMR, quality research have been made and published in
national and international repute journals. The volume of research publication at DRMR is
increasing and information of research publication available at is scattered and not ready
accessible for evaluation purpose. In response to fulfill the need of an intelligent publication
information system to evaluate individual scientists or research teams at the institute level,
DRMR decided to develop custom-designed online publication information system for the
research institute to organize and maintain the information of publication and serve as an
evaluation tool for publication outputs, through providing a powerful attribute-based search
capability. The overall objective to develop this repository was to enhance the ability of the
DRMR to manage all research publications of the scientists and generate the information for
evaluation. The system developed supports a wide range of publication types and is designed by
implementing MVC (Model-View-Controller) architecture to meet the specific requirements of
agricultural research institutions having the features like advanced search option, extraction of
publications statistics based on a variety of form based queries. The benefits of MVC
architecture have the separation between model and view allows multiple views to use the same
model. Consequently, an application’s model components are easier to implement, test, and
maintain, since all access to the model goes through these components. Metadata formats
suitable for describing agricultural scientific and research publications have been used in creating
the database.
This system was developed by using open source technology LAMP that allows the researchers
or users to access and enters the publication data in the database themselves [3]. With maximum
of versatility in mind, IR was designed with functions to enter and display publication data,
search the database for text in certain fields or in the entire entries, create publication lists, and
calculate statistics data. It also reduces the time significantly needed for answering specific
questions related to publications of an author or institution and the repository is named as
DRMRPubInfo. Though, DRMRPubInfo is a prototype system developed for a single institution,
the system can be implemented for any agricultural research organization for management of
publication information and research evaluation [4].

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2. What is Institutional Repository???
An institutional repository (IR) is an online archive for collecting, preserving, and disseminating
digital copies of the intellectual output of an institution, particularly a research institution An
institutional repository can be viewed as a "a set of services that a university offers to members
of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the
institution and its community members”. For a university, this includes materials such
as monographs, academic journal articles—both before (preprints) and after (postprints)
undergoing peer review—as well as electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs)[5].
An institutional repository might also include other digital assets generated by academics, such
as datasets, administrative documents, course notes, learning objects, or conference proceedings.
Deposit of material in an institutional repository is sometimes mandated by that institution.
Fig.1-Institutional Repository [6]

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2.1 Features and Benefits
Features and benefits include [7]:
 Opening up outputs of the institution to a worldwide audience;
 Maximizing the visibility and impact of these outputs as a result;
 Showcasing the institution to interested constituencies – prospective staff, prospective
students and other stakeholders;
 Collecting and curating digital output;
 Managing and measuring research and teaching activities;
 Providing a workspace for work-in-progress, and for collaborative or large-scale
projects;
 Enabling and encouraging interdisciplinary approaches to research;
 Facilitating the development and sharing of digital teaching materials and aids, and
 Supporting student endeavours, providing access to theses and dissertations and a
location for the development of e-portfolios.
Fig.2-Institutional Repositories management systems [8]

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3. Model View Framework
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern that separates an application
into three main logical components: the model, the view, and the controller. Each of these
components are built to handle specific development aspects of an application. MVC is one
of the most frequently used industry-standard web development framework to create scalable
and extensible project [9].
Fig.3 - The basic MVC relationship [9]

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3.1 Model
 A model is an object representing data or even activity, e.g. a database table or even
some plant-floor production-machine process.
 The model manages the behavior and data of the application domain, responds to
requests for information about its state and responds to instructions to change state.
 The model represents enterprise data and the business rules that govern access to and
updates of this data. Often the model serves as a software approximation to a real-world
process, so simple real-world modeling techniques apply when defining the model.
 The model is the piece that represents the state and low-level behavior of the
component. It manages the state and conducts all transformations on that state. The
model has no specific knowledge of either its controllers or its views. The system itself
maintains links between model and views and notifies the views when the model
changes state. The view is the piece that manages the visual display of the state
represented by the model. A model can have more than one view.
3.2 View
 A view is some form of visualisation of the state of the model.
 The view manages the graphical and/or textual output to the portion of the bitmapped
display that is allocated to its application.
 The view renders the contents of a model. It accesses enterprise data through the model
and specifies how that data should be presented.
 The view is responsible for mapping graphics onto a device. A view typically has a one
to one correspondence with a display surface and knows how to render to it. A view
attaches to a model and renders its contents to the display surface.

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3.3 Controller
 A controller offers facilities to change the state of the model. The controller interprets the
mouse and keyboard inputs from the user, commanding the model and/or the view to
change as appropriate.
 A controller is the means by which the user interacts with the application. A controller
accepts input from the user and instructs the model and view to perform actions based on
that input. In effect, the controller is responsible for mapping end-user action to
application response.
 The controller translates interactions with the view into actions to be performed by the
model. In a stand-alone GUI client, user interactions could be button clicks or menu
selections, whereas in a Web application they appear as HTTP GET and POST requests.
The actions performed by the model include activating business processes or changing
the state of the model. Based on the user interactions and the outcome of the model
actions, the controller responds by selecting an appropriate view.
 The controller is the piece that manages user interaction with the model. It provides the
mechanism by which changes are made to the state of the model.
3.4 Interaction
In addition to dividing the application into three kinds of components, the model–view–
controller design defines the interactions between them.
 A model stores data that is retrieved according to commands from the controller and
displayed in the view.
 A view generates new output to the user based on changes in the model.
 A controller can send commands to the model to update the model's state (e.g., editing a
document). It can also send commands to its associated view to change the view's
presentation of the model (e.g., scrolling through a document).

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3.5 Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
 Simultaneous development - Multiple developers can work simultaneously on the model,
controller and views.
 High cohesion - MVC enables logical grouping of related actions on a controller together.
The views for a specific model are also grouped together.
 Low coupling - The very nature of the MVC framework is such that there is low coupling
among models, views or controllers
 Ease of modification - Because of the separation of responsibilities, future development or
modification is easier
 Multiple views for a model - Models can have multiple views
Disadvantages
 Code navigability - The framework navigation can be complex, hence it introduces new
layers of abstractions and requires users to adapt its decomposition criteria to MVC.
 Multi-artifact consistency - Decomposing a feature into three artifacts causes scattering.
Thus, requiring developer(s) to maintain the consistency of multiple representations at once.

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4.Model View Design and Architecture
The system designed using MVC (Model-View-Controller) design architecture which is very
useful for architecting interactive web based applications. MVC encapsulate data along with its
processing (model) and isolate it from the process of manipulation (controller) and presentation
(look/view) to be represented on the User Interface. MVC follows the most common approach of
layering. Layering is nothing but a logical split up of author code in to functions in different
classes. This approach is well known and most accepted approach.
Fig.4- MVC (Model-View-Controller) design architecture of the system[10]
The main advantage in this approach is re-usability of code and easier to maintain and develop as
well as to further upgrade with new features in the future. In the process of developing
DRMRPubinfo, each layer in the architectural of MVC (Model-View-Controller) have been
implemented differently such as MySQL database which serves as a model, HTML, Java Script

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used for the user interface(view), and PHP web service as a controller. PHP is a powerful
language to develop dynamic and interactive web applications. One of the defining features of
PHP is the ease for developers to connect and manipulate a database. PHP prepares the functions
for database manipulation. However, database management is done by the Structure Query
Language (SQL).
The resulting system architecture designed to develop an efficient research publication
information system that has been built using the implementation of the MVC (Model-View-
Controller) design pattern is presented in fig.3.
The model means the business logic of the application and is the core of the application. The
common classes in the model are: connect DB, insert, update, delete, select, etc. These classes
are to be used for manipulating the database and here MySQL database serves as a model. The
view is the user interface of the controller and is the public face of the user event’s response. In
publication database, multiple views for different purposes are designed and developed with
HTML, cascading style sheets (CSS), Java script etc. The controller component implements the
flow of control between the view and the model. It contains code to handle the user actions and
invoke changes in the model.
4.1 Data model
Database contains the information on publications and authors who have written. Multiple
authors may write one publication, and an author can write many publications. Authors are
publishing different type of publications; in this system all publications come out from
agricultural research institute such as DRMR can be distinguished into 12 different categories.
These includes, research paper published in journals, conference or seminar paper, research
thesis, technical bulletin, extension folder, annual report, book, book chapter, training manual,
popular article, newsletter and magazine. The data actually kept in an entry depend on the
categories of the publication. The publication entity includes fields, title, abstract, contributing
author, journal name, year of publication, volume, issue, pages, publisher name, address and doc
link of document[11].

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Fig.5- ER diagram and publication categories [12]
The author entity includes the attributes, author name, discipline, research interest and address.
The publication entity includes fields, title, abstract, contributing author, journal name, year of
publication, volume, issue, pages, publisher name, address and doc link of document. Author is
connected to publication through relationship of write or edit. The journal/proc etc entity
includes the attributes, id, name, publisher address. journal entity is connected to publication
through published relationship. In this way every entity has relationship between them in some
way.
4.2 Publication data
Since its establishment in 1993, the Directorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research (DRMR) has
been conducting multiple research programmes in an effort to improve the rapeseed-mustard
crop. The research outcomes have been communicated by the personnel of the directorate
through different publications. The comprehensive list of publications under different categories
viz, research papers, conference proceeding, technical bulletins, thesis, etc. were acquired by

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scanning old institutional publications. Most of these publications were acquired electronically
from the publishers and some of the publications were available as openly accessible documents.
The publication database contains information about all the publications related to rapeseed-
mustard research conducted by the researchers of the institute under the categories listed above.
The database contains full-text material of the published publication available in electronic form
wherever possible.
4.2Metadata base and schema design
The concept of metadata of publication is used in the creation of database. This will allow
filtering and provide enhanced search effectiveness within the database. Publication metadata
elements provide standard information about the research publication.
Fig. 6 - Metadata and schema design[14]

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The most commonly used metadata formats and thesauri suitable for describing scientific
communications in the agriculture domain include the Dublin Core (DC), Metadata Object
Description Schema (MODS), Virtual Open Access Agriculture and Aquaculture Repository
Metadata Application Profile (VOA3R AP) and the AGROVOC thesaurus [13]. The
DRMRPubinfo system uses the VOA3R Metadata Application Profile integrated with DC and
AGROVOC thesaurus, which is one of the most suitable and viable metadata formats for content
description in agriculture. Figure 4 presents the metadata schema designed using MYSQL for
effective management and retrieval of research publication. Data parameters to be indexed along
with each publication are: ID, title, authors, journal name, publication year, volume, issue, page
numbers, etc.
4.3 User interface and system implementation strategies
User interface was designed keeping in view the three types of users which includes simple user,
authors and administrator. The page diagram of system for user interface has been presented in
fig.7, where simple users can only go through the solid lines while authors and administrators
can go through both solid and dashed lines. A user-friendly interface for the system has been
developed by suitably designed GUI. The system has been designed to provide metadata-based
filtering to facilitate appending, editing, browsing and searching.
DRMRPubinfo is implemented using Model View Controller (MVC) architecture and the open
source technology LAMP (Linux - Apache - MySQL - PHP). MySQL database was used for
back end data storage, and required tables were created. For describing implementation of Model
View Controller (MVC) architecture in the developed system, the flow chart of part of codes
have been presented in illustrations. The MVC architecture is implemented in every application
module. Every module has one model, one controller and some view. The model consists of at
least one file which is responsible for accessing the data into the database. Fig 6 is a sample
source of model

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Fig. 7 - User interface diagram of the system [15]
User interface was designed keeping in view the three types of users which includes simple user,
authors and administrator as presented in fig.7, where simple users can only go through the solid
lines while authors and administrators can go through both solid and dashed lines. Simple user
can only search the things where as administrators can modify the data by sucessfull login in
login page.

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5. DRMRPubinfo
5.1 DRMRPubinfo System
DRMRPubinfo is the DRMR’s system for managing research publications. The system can
maintain details of all publications about the research carried out at the DRMR and provides
information to different stakeholders both within and outside the country. The system is used to
populate author pages with publication details and provides quantitative and qualitative
information on publications for evaluation of performance of researcher [16]. The DRMPubinfo
is an interactive user-friendly system that allows users to perform record searches, insertions,
updates and deletions conveniently without any specialized training or knowledge of Structured
Query Language (SQL). The users using the system are divided in three classes. The first one
contains the users with administrative privileges, called ‘Administrators’ who have the
responsibility of maintaining the whole system through the addition, deletion or modification of
the publication records. The second class contains the ‘Authors’ who is only be able to modify
aspects of their previous added publications. Finally the third user class consists of ‘Simple
users’ who have only read privileges. Read privileges have also been granted to all users. The
application is mostly benefit ‘Administrators’ and ‘Authors’ classes by making their job easier
through the use of the system facilities. It is obvious however that a well maintained and up to
date system will also benefit ‘Simple users’ as they will always be kept informed with fresh
information. Manager of research institute even being simple user be able to evaluate the
performance of institute or individual researcher so-called ‘Authors’ in term of publication
output.
The system offers significant saving of digital space and requires lesser time for updating and
management of digital research publication information. The integration of the capabilities to
add new publication, search, browse, export, generate statistical reports and to e-mail selected
publication makes the system a versatile tool for research evaluation and monitoring. Besides the
system administrator, each scientific personnel are provided with a login account to add their
own publications to the DRMPubinfo database. Figure 7 is a sample screen-shot of user
interface.

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5.2 Operation of DRMRPubinfo
5.2.1 IUD records operation
The potential use of the system for maintaining publication data and researcher i.e. author
evaluation purpose mandates that the record operations; INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE (IUD)
must be performed in a secure manner. For secure transaction of records, the system operates in
administrator and user mode. After login as administrator the insert, update and delete of records
can be performed. After successful login, system populates the only results that relate to the
author and enable to modify records. Figure 7 shows a screen-shot of the interface for inserting
and updating new records of publication to the database. There may be multiple authors
belonging to a publication, therefore before adding new publication record, the system checks for
the duplicity of records in database. To avoid typographic errors, the system provides a
dropdown menu option for selecting different attributes.
5.2.2 Search features of the system
This is the main feature of every publication information management system. The system
provides a powerful facility to search the publications within the database. There are three
primary methods of searching for publications in DRMRPubinfo:
1) Browsing by publication categories
2) Keyword based search
3) Advanced search based on different attributes (Fig.8).
5.2.3 Browsing publication categories
Publications in the database have been organized into different categories such as research paper,
abstract, conference proceedings paper, edited book, book chapter, research report/notes,
technical bulletins, newsletters, edited conference proceedings, training manuals, etc[17]. In
category search the system provides complete information of the publication published by the
institute in the category. Besides these, it also gives the counts of publications available in
database for a category.

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5.2.4 Keyword Based Search
DRMRPubinfo has comprehensive information of publications including books, monographs,
research papers, discussion papers, conference proceedings, technical bulletins, etc that reflect
the research interests of the institute. Retrieving information on a specific publication is usually
time-consuming since the users have to browse the entire information of a category in
publication database. To overcome this limitation, the software provides a keyword search
facility. In keyword search the whole database can be searched for specific keywords and the list
of publication that matches the keywords is displayed [18]. It also provides the list of important
keywords and automatically enters the keywords for better search results.
5.2.5 Advanced Search Options
The database uses third party publication quality evaluation data for enabling search based on
quality parameters under advanced search option. The National Academy of Agriculture
Sciences (NAAS) evaluates research journals related to agricultural research and provides a
rating which is a widely recognized rating index in India. The journals having the Thompson
Reuters Impact factors are assigned a rating between 6.0 and 10.0 based on their standing in
Thompson Reuters Impact factor list published yearly [19]. The journals which are not available
in Thompson Reuters Impact factor list are assigned a rating between 1.0 and 5.9 (NAAS, 2013).
The integration of rating parameter in the database allows certain complex searches and provides
more control over the quality and relevance of the results. The advanced search option is
designed for users who wish to specify exact search criteria to search the publication in database
on user-specified attributes. In addition to listing only publication detail specific to that
individual author, it provides the faculty member’s educational degree, discipline, research
interest and contact information. Most preferred advance search options provided by the system
are presented in the Fig8.

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5.2.6 Publication statistics
An important feature of the system is to generate customized dynamic statistics of publications
which can be utilized for report generation, performance evaluation and monitoring of research
publications, institutions and individuals. For evaluation of a researcher, system provides
statistics such as number of different publications published by author, even of research papers
published in different impact factors rating journals. Statistical of publications generated
dynamically as and when query made and depending upon query, therefore it has not been stored
in the database. Coding has been done for presentation of statistical data. For graphical
presentation of data, Google Chart API was integrated into the software. Google’s Chart API is a
tool that allows embedding dynamic charts and graphs to enhance interactivity. In this way,
summary of publication statistics for DRMR can also be generated in graphical form.
Fig. 8 - A sample screen-shot provides the user interface [20]

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6. Conclusion
The potential uses of Institutional Repositories content in other digital environment are
countless. Institutional Repositories content does not need to ‘sit’ in the Institutional Repositories
only. It should be brought into new digital environments where it can be easily consulted,
represented and integrated with other current research extension and educational activities. The
DRMRPubinfo is a web based application aimed at facilitating the management of large
collection of research publications, by implementing automated organization techniques,
powerful but concise interface methods and optimized data handling. The user interface provides
several means for browsing, navigating, searching, filtering and exporting publications
information. MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern using LAMP technologies were
selected as an implementation platform for this system. DRMPubinfo database contains
comprehensive coverage of DRMR’s research/technical publications dating back to the inception
of institute in 1993. Although a formal assessment of the system has not been done, informal
feedback shows very positive reviews by DRMR librarians, researchers or authors, and
administrators due to effective management and the easy user interface. There exists sufficient
inbuilt flexibility in this publications system so that it can be adapted by other agricultural
research organizations specially other ICAR institutes.

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7. References
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