Student Database Management System

Student Database Management System
Ajay Shankar Bidyarthy , Abhishek Kumar
b.ajay@iitg.ernet.in kumar.ak@iitg.ernet.in
November 13, 2012

Abstract: An organized and systematic office solution is essential for all universities and
organizations. There are many departments of administration for the maintenance of college
information and student databases in any institution. All these departments provide various
records regarding students. Most of these track records need to maintain information about
the students. This information could be the general details like student name, address,
performance, attendance etc or specific information related to departments like collection of
data. All the modules in college administration are interdependent. They are maintained
manually. So they need to be automated and centralized as, Information from one module
will be needed by other modules. For example when a student needs his course completion
certificate it needs to check many details about the student like his name, reg number, year
of study, exams he attended and many other details. So it needs to contact all the modules
that are office, department and examination and result of students.
With that in mind, we overhauled the existing Student Database Management System and
made necessary improvement to streamline the processes. Administrators using the system
will find that the process of recording and retrieving students information and managing
their classes, including marking of attendance, is now a breeze. In general, this project aims
to enhance efficiency and at the same time maintain information accurateness. Later in this
report, features and improvement that allow achievement to this goal will be demonstrated
and highlighted.
Our work is useful for easy user interface. We are planning to uttilize the powerful database
management, data retrieval and data manipulation. We will provides more ease for managing
the data than manually maintaining in the documents. Our work is useful for saving valuable
time and reduces the huge paper work.
Keywords: Education, Database managements, students database, students academic
performance, students health record.
1

Contents
List of Figures 4
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Project Review 2
2.1 Project management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Student management system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3 Resources 4
3.1 System Development lyfe cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 Scripting language selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3 Database selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.4 Web server selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4 System Analysis and Design 7
4.1 Use case analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 System Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
5 Database Design and Development 12
5.1 Database design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5.2 Database development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6 System and Database Testing 17
6.1 System and database testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7 Project Management 33
2

7.1 Work breakdown structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
7.2 Risk management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
8 Conclusions 35
8.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
9 Critical Reviews 36
9.1 Critical reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
3

List of Figures
2.1 Project Development Phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3.1 SDLC Phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 Comparison of web servers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1 use case analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
4.2 Student registration process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.3 Export students module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.4 Search attributes for registration process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4.5 Enrol existing student to class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.6 Legend and attendance system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5.1 Database creation in phpMyAdmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2 Table creation in phpMyAdmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.3 Attribute creation in phpMyAdmin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
5.4 Total number of tables in a database . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
5.5 Data of one table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
6.1 Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
6.2 Test1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.3 Test2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.4 Test3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
6.5 Test4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.6 Test5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
6.7 Test6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
6.8 Test7 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
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6.9 Test8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6.10 Test9 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
6.11 Test10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6.12 Test11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
6.13 Test12 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.14 Test13 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
6.15 Test14 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.16 Test15 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6.17 Test16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.18 Test17 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
6.19 Test18 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.20 Test19 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.21 Test20 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
6.22 Test21 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
6.23 Test22 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
6.24 Test23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
7.1 Risk Assessment Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
5

Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Introduction
Student Management System deals with all kind of student details, academic related reports,
college details, course details, curriculum, batch details and other resource related details
too. It tracks all the details of a student from the day one to the end of his course which can
be used for all reporting purpose, tracking of attendance, progress in the course, completed
semesters years, coming semester year curriculum details, exam details, project or any other
assignment details, ﬁnal exam result etc.
Our design can facilitate us to explore all the activities happening in the college, even we
can get to know which faculty is assigned to which course, the current status of a student,
attendance percentage of a student and upcoming requirements of a student. The student
management system is an automated version of manual Student Management System. It
can handle all details about a student. The details include college details, subject details,
student personnel details, academic details, exam details etc.
In case of manual system they need a lot of time, manpower etc. Here almost all work
is computerized. So the accuracy is maintained. Maintaining backup is very easy. It can
do with in a few minutes. Our system has two type of accessing modes, administrator and
user. Student management system is managed by an administrator. It is the job of the
administrator to insert update and monitor the whole process. When a user log in to the
system. He/she would only view details of the student. He/she can’t perform any changes.
Our system has seven modules, they are administrator, student, course, department, exam,
attendance, and section. These modules and its attributes with entity relationship module
presented in the ER diagram secion.
1

Chapter 2
Project Review
2.1 Project management
Project management skills are put to good use for this project. Having gone through project
management modules in Time Series Analysis, Optimization and with two interns Project
Management for Business and IT respectively, they enhanced my knowledge on managing a
project. Project management focuses on achieving the objectives by applying ﬁve processes
presented in Figure below.
Figure 2.1: Project Development Phases
2.2 Student management system
There are many software development companies that oﬀer student management system for
schools in the market. There are records on the past years projects on student management
system is done by students. Through the researches, it is observed that there are features
where this project can adopt and implement. One of it will be with addition of new course
or class, or even upgrading of students to the next level, the school administrator can easily
2

register all of them within a particular class into the new one using just a page and not
having to register one at a time. With this feature, it helps administrator to save time as
well as increase their eﬃciency.
3

Chapter 3
Resources
3.1 System Development lyfe cycle
Systems Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is the most common process adopted to develop a
project and not surprisingly, this project is following this model too. To be precise, waterfall
model is being applied. Waterfall model is a sequential model process where the input of a
phase actually results from the previous phase.
Figure 3.1: SDLC Phases
There are ﬁve phases in this model and the ﬁrst phase is the planning stage. The planning
stage determines the objectives of the project and whether the project should be given the
green light to proceed. This is where the proposal submission comes into picture. After
obtaining the approval, the next phase is analysis. Gathering and analysing the system and
user requirements is essential for entry to the design step.
With the user requirements gathering completed, there is a need to prepare the resources
for the project. Be it software or hardware components, careful consideration and selection
is to be taken care at this stage. The decision on the appropriate resources to be used is
4

further elaborated under the subsections below. The next step is to design the system and
database structure.
Results from the analysis and preparation that were concluded from the previous stage are
put into action. With the user requirements in mind, the flow of the system is planned and
the user interface is designed to suit their easy navigation needs. In addition, the number of
tables, attributes, primary and unique keys of the database is listed.
After completing the design, actual coding begins. Database is created and codes are
written. Some of the codes required amendments and improvement to it so these are being
developed at this fourth stage of the waterfall model. With the development completed,
testing will begin. The codes and database are tested to ensure the results obtained are as
intended. More time is spent on both development and testing stages because it is inevitable
to have errors and issues and buffer time is allocated for troubleshooting.
3.2 Scripting language selection
There are many scripting languages available in the market. VBScript, Perl, JSP (Java
Server Pages), ASP (Active Server Pages) and PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor) are some of
those commonly used. Yet for this project, PHP is the language that is utilised for the
coding piece because it is a server-side, embeddable HTML language. Being a widely-used
open source scripting language, it is free for everyone to use and is especially suited for web
development. On top of that, the existing system is already using PHP. There are many
advantages for using PHP thus no need for the switch to another scripting language.
Other than being a freeware, there are many free upgrade packages easily available. The
other benefit of choosing PHP is the ease in installation. It can run as a plug in on quite a
number of web servers such as the Apache. On the other hand, JSP requires J2EE server
to run and because it is a Java coded language, it is therefore more complex to understand
and to do coding
Further exploring on the processing speed against ASP, PHP is interpreted at runtime and
not compiled into memory whereas ASP is more memory intensive with each ASP language
compiler running in its own processes. This results in slower processing speed for ASP. In
addition, ASP runs more reliably only on Microsoft Windows-based web servers than other
web servers
In conclusion, PHP is the preferred selection due to the ease of usage and it can be
uploaded and run on another platform with minimal change required to be done to the script.
Beyond and above, the compiling time and speed for PHP is faster and more efficient.
3.3 Database selection
There are a variety of databases that we can select from the market. The widely used
databases are Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL, Oracle and MySQL. Looking at Microsoft
5

Access, it does not encourage concurrent usage and it may be inefficient, as the database
needs to be saved into one file. It is also unable to process high speed and large size database
as compared to MySQL.
In terms of costs, Oracle database requires a licensing fee but MySQL database is a
freeware. In addition, MySQL database is easy to install, user friendly, reliable and is able
to run on different platforms. Moreover PHP can access MySQL database directly without
the need to go through ODBC (Open Database Connectivity).
To conclude, PHP script is able to run faster with MySQL database and the processing
time will definitely be shorter. The pre-school does not require complex and costly software
for its database management system hence MySQL is the ideal database for this project.
3.4 Web server selection
After deciding on the scripting language and database, next is to select the web server that
can support them. Web server is necessary for the delivery of web content to the web browser.
As such, Apache HTTP server which has performance similar with other ’high-performance’
server is considered
Thereafter, research and actual testing have been performed to see the outcome of the
various servers listed in the Figure below. These servers include PHP and MySQL in their
installation packages thus allowing smoother and simpler download process. However, based
on the performance and interface, Wamp or LAMP server is the preferred choice.
Figure 3.2: Comparison of web servers
6

Chapter 4
System Analysis and Design
4.1 Use case analysis
In order to provide a clearer picture of the functionality provided by the student management
module, we have done a use case analysis. Figure below is a use case diagram to present the
functionality in the student management module.
Administrator
Faculty
View Class
Schedule
Add Class
Edit Class
Register
Family
Enroll Student
to Class
List Student
View
Attendance
Take Attendance
View Class
Details
Bulk Enrolment
Register
Student
Update Family
Data
Create Time
Table
Delete
Timetable
Include
Include
Include
Include
Include
Student
Management Model
Use Case
Analysis???
Figure 4.1: use case analysis
7

4.2 System Design
Under the existing student management module, the administrator has to ﬁrst register the
family. This includes the parent’s particulars and home details. After submitting these data,
the administrator will be directed to the student page whereby the student information is
to be submitted.
Figure below provides the interface of the existing student registration site. For easy
navigation, the registration of the student and enrolment to the class has been combined
into one process.
Figure 4.2: Student registration process
Besides the registration for a single student, there is a new feature added to the system.
That is to ’export’ bulk students from a class to another. This new feature is created to
minimize the time required to register students to a new class. The school has many programs
ranging from beginner to intermediate levels thus with this new feature, the administrator
can easily enrol those students to their next level. The interface of this function is shown in
Figure below.
8

Figure 4.3: Export students module
Other than the ’export’ feature, the system has been modified to allow a couple of search
attributes at the family registration part. The name attribute includes the first and last
name whereas contact number means mobile, office and home number.
Figure below present functionality at registration page.
Figure 4.4: Search attributes for registration process
Figure below present the functionality to add student to class module from the existing
one.
9

Figure 4.5: Enrol existing student to class
For the attendance marking system the following functionality has been added
Figure 4.6: Legend and attendance system
In order to fulfil the second objective on minimizing human error, there are a few error
checking functions being implemented for the student management module. Firstly, at the
family registration page, all the fields except the entry date, referral and remarks fields have
been coded to do validation check. This is to ensure that all the relevant information are
10

collected and inserted into the database in an orderly manner.
The contact fields are designed to prompt an error message if none of the three fields
has been input. The school requires at least one valid number. In addition, contact number
should not contain alphabets so this has been taken into consideration for the error checking.
As for surname, name and nationality fields, checks are implemented to make sure the fields
are not empty. On the other hand the postal code which should not contain alphabet; there
will be message to alert any error as well.
Other than error checks on family registration page, the student registration page also
checks for the surname and name fields. After retrieving the class details at the same page,
users will be alerted if no class is selected for the enrolment. This is also implemented at
the bulk student enrolment process. If the targeted class code is not provided, error message
will appear.
The codes for the system design are provided under Appendix A.
11

Chapter 5
Database Design and Development
5.1 Database design
Database is critical for all businesses. A good database does not allow any form of anomalies
and stores only relevant information in an ordered manner. If a database has anomalies, it
is affecting the efficiency and data integrity. For example, delete anomaly arise upon the
deletion of a row which also forces other useful data to be lost. As such, the tables need
to be normalised. This fulfils the last objective of ensuring data are accurate and retrieved
correctly. For the database of this project, the tables are normalised to BCNF as shown
below.
admin(id, name, password)
faculty(id, name, password)
ATTENDANCE (student-class-id, class-date, status)
Where ATTENDANCE.student-class-id must exist in STUDENT-CLASS.id
ATTENDANCE-CODE (attendance-code, attendance-status)
CLASS-SCHEDULE (id, code, clientcode, clientname, educatorname, educatornric, cur-
riculatheme, startdate, enddate, starttime, endtime)
Where CLASS-SCHEDULE.code must exist in CLIENT.code,
CLASS-SCHEDULE.clientname must exist in CLIENT.name,
CLASS-SCHEDULE.educatornric must exist in EDUCATOR.nric,
CLASS-SCHEDULE.educatorname must exist in EDUCATOR.name
And CLASS-SCHEDULE.curriculatheme must exist in CURRICULA.theme
CLASS-TIMETABLE (class-schedule-id, class-date)
Where CLASS-TIMETABLE.class-schedule-id must exist in CLASS-SCHEDULE.id
CLIENT (code, name)
CURRICULA (grp, theme)
EDUCATOR (nric, name)
(nric: National Registration Identity Card)
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FAMILY (id, entry-date, reg-fee, status, name, surname, nric, address1, address2, postal-
code, contact-home, contact-office, contact-hp, email, nationality, referred-by, remarks)
STUDENT (id, family-id, name, surname, sex, dob, status)
Where STUDENT.family-id must exist in FAMILY.id
STUDENT-CLASS (id, student-id, class-schedule-id, remark)
Where STUDENT-CLASS.student-id must exist in STUDENT.id
And STUDENT-CLASS.class-schedule-id must exist in CLASS-SCHEDULE.id
5.2 Database development
fter identifying the tables and columns of the database, the next step is to create them.
Basically there are two ways to do so. The first option is to create them using commands.
Below are some of the ’create’ and ’insert’ statements. The complete database code is
provided under Appendix B.
create table if not exists admin(aid char(50) not null primary key, aname char(50), apwd
char(50));
insert into admin values(’admin’, ’admin’, password(’admin’));
create table if not exists faculty(fid char(50) not null primary key, fname char(50), fpwd
char(50));
insert into faculty values(’faculty’, ’faculty’, password(’faculty’));
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS curricula (grp varchar(50) NOT NULL, theme var-
char(50) NOT NULL, PRIMARY KEY (grp) ) ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;
INSERT INTO curricula (grp, theme) VALUES (’1’, ’Math’), (’2’, ’Phy’), (’3’, ’Che’),
(’4’, ’CSE’);
The second option is to use phpMyAdmin. This is a Graphical User Interface (GUI)
interface for building and maintaining the database which is included in the web server,
XAMPP package. This is a simpler way to create the tables if one does not know the usage
of commands.
The first step is to create the database as shown in Figure below. The default storage
engine in this MySQL server is InnoDB which has commit, rollback, and crash-recovery
capabilities to protect user data. Following that is to create the tables in the database.
13

Figure 5.1: Database creation in phpMyAdmin
Figure below gives a view of the table creation.
Figure 5.2: Table creation in phpMyAdmin
Figure below shows the interface for creating the attributes in the table.
14

Figure 5.3: Attribute creation in phpMyAdmin
After completing the creation, Figure below depicts the contents of the database, providing
information like the number of tables in the database and the number of records in each of
them. The MySQL server, phpMyAdmin, has many other features such as the deletion of
tables, attributes and database. It also provides a mean for exporting or importing data into
another database easily just by selecting the desired option seen at the top of the table in
Figure below.
15

Figure 5.4: Total number of tables in a database
To view the data in one of the table, this can be done by clicking on the table name listed
on the left menu as per Figure below. The ﬁgure illustrates the educator table and there are
three records in it.
Figure 5.5: Data of one table
16

Chapter 6
System and Database Testing
6.1 System and database testing
Testing is the last phase of this project. This is the stage where it shows whether the system
and database are working as desired. Otherwise, further rectiﬁcation is required. Tests have
been conducted and recorded below to show the results.
Figure 6.1: Test
Test 1
17

Purpose: Test the error checking functions
Location: Family Registration
Condition: All mandatory ﬁelds need to be ﬁlled up
Result
Figure 6.2: Test1
Test 2
Condition: At least one contact number is required
Result:
18

Figure 6.3: Test2
Test 3
Condition: Contact number should contain numbers only
Result:
Figure 6.4: Test3
Test 4
19

Condition: Email address must be valid
Result:
Figure 6.5: Test4
Test 5
Condition: Postal Code should contain numbers only
Result:
Figure 6.6: Test5
Test 6
20

Purpose: Test the Search function
Condition: No search value is input
Result:
Figure 6.7: Test6
Test 7
Condition: Search using NRIC
Result:
21

Figure 6.8: Test7
Test 8
Condition: Search using any contact number
Result:
22

Figure 6.9: Test8
Test 9
Condition: Search using name
Result:
23

Figure 6.10: Test9
Test 10
Purpose: Update of family details
Database: Family table
Condition: All data are valid
Result: In the system:
24

Figure 6.11: Test10
Test 11
Purpose: Update of family details
Condition: No update is done (status quo)
Figure 6.12: Test11
25

Test 12
Purpose: Create family
Result:In the system:
Figure 6.13: Test12
Test 13
Purpose: Create student (After creating the family)
Location: Student Registration
Condition: All mandatory ﬁelds are required
Figure 6.14: Test13
Test 14
Condition: All mandatory ﬁelds are required
Result:
26

Figure 6.15: Test14
Test 15
Condition: Need to select the class after retrieve class
Result:
Figure 6.16: Test15
Test 16
27

Database: Student and Student-class tables
Figure 6.17: Test16
Test 17
Purpose: Delete student
Database: Student and Student-class tables
Figure 6.18: Test17
Test 18
Purpose: To test the export function
Location: Export students
Condition: A valid class code is required.
Result:
28

Figure 6.19: Test18
Test 19
Purpose: To test the export function
Location: Export students
Database: Student-class table
Condition: Selected student to be exported from TRY-01 to class TRY-02
Result: In the system
Figure 6.20: Test19
Test 20
Purpose: To test the list students function
Location: List Student
29

Database: Student and Family tables
Condition: Search for students with name ’Bhai’ and list out the family information
Result:
Figure 6.21: Test20
Test 21
Condition: List all students in the school by the order of Date of Birth
Result:
30

Figure 6.22: Test21
Test 22
Condition: List all students in the school by the order of Surname
Result:
31

Figure 6.23: Test22
Test 23
Purpose: To test the attendance taking function
Location: Take Attendance
Database: Attendance table
Figure 6.24: Test23
32

Chapter 7
Project Management
7.1 Work breakdown structure
The Work Breakdown Structure provides a clear picture of the items that are required to be
completed for the project work scope. It is arranged in a tree structure manner to show all
sub-sections required to be accomplished in each phase throughout the project.
7.2 Risk management
Every project has uncertainties and they may aﬀect the project success. These uncertainties
are known as risk. There is a need to determine the risks involved in the project to reduce
the chance of its occurrence as well as develop a plan to either mitigate or avoid the risks
that have been identiﬁed.
After identifying and determining the risks, they are recorded in a table called the risk
assessment matrix. This matrix lists the severity which is also known as the impact level in
terms of High, Medium and Low. In addition to those details, the action plan that can be
taken for each of the risks is clearly stated too.
33

Figure 7.1: Risk Assessment Matrix
34

Chapter 8
Conclusions
8.1 Conclusions
Simplicity is never simple. As we have seen in this project, the process of creating a user-
friendly and straightforward platform that facilitates the administrator’s job is one filled
with complexity. From understanding user requirements to system design and finally system
prototype and finalization, every step requires in-depth understanding and commitment
towards achieving the objectives of the project.
Although the student database management module is not fully integrated to the system
and used on real time, the system prototype demonstrates easy navigation and data are
stored in a systematic way. Overall, efficiency has improved and work processes simplified.
Although all the objectives have been met, the system still has room for improvement. The
system is robust and flexible enough for future upgrade using advanced technology and
devices.
35

Chapter 9
Critical Reviews
9.1 Critical reviews
In the process of doing this project, obstacles have been encountered. I have learnt to be
more flexible in resolving issues. One of the situations that I have faced was when I had
installed MySQL server, but it did not work. Then I tried to troubleshoot, research online
and did a couple of re-installation but to no avail. Then I installed XAMPP, it did not work
out too. Some how I did get rid of this problem but I did not like XAMPP server. Therefore
I decided to install LAMP server. Yes it worked fine. At the end I found that I had installed
multiple server and hence system was confused which server is to be used i.e. conflicts with
MySQL. Then I stopped all server running on my laptop and decicded to start only LAMP
server and it worked fine.
Being a novice in PHP language, I had difficulty in understanding the basic to write php
files. Therefore I took longer time to understand how and why PHP works. I researched too
much online. Went through several examples, tutorials etc.
Still I am not good enough in PHP language. In this entire project I have used only
PHP and HTML languages. but later I realized that there are multiple laguages which can
support in designing a good database project. Those are CSS, JavaScript. There may be
more but trully speeking I really don’t know any more.
Eventually with more hands-on exposure throughout this project, I managed to gain some
understanding of PHP language.
Discipline played an important role for the completion of this project. Using the project
management skills taught in class, I was able to apply them to this project.
Besides project management skills, I had also applied the database knowledge that I had
learnt in the class to this project. From analysing of database structure and their relations
to creating the database and tables, all these have strengthened my understanding. However
when doing part of the codes, I would still research online and find solutions, for example,
the usage of ’Ignore’ command to avoid duplication of data from inserting into the database.
This command did not work on MyISAM storage engine thus I had to change my database
36

storage to InnoDB in order for that to work.
Overall though the project was ﬁlled with challenges, it had given me opportunity to apply
and strengthen my knowledge as well as gain new knowledge and skill through researches
and experienced professionals whom I am fortunate enough to encounter.
37

Student Database Management System

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