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Abstract
This report includes a development presentation of an information system for managing
the staff data within a small company or organization. The system as such as it has been
developed is called Employee Management System. It consists of functionally related GUI
(application program) and database.
The choice of the programming tools is individual and particular.
Keywords
Information system, Database system, DBMS, parent table, child table, table fields,
primary key, foreign key, relationship, sql queries, objects, classes, controls.
Table of Contents
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1. Introduction…………………………………………………………3
1.1 Background……………………………………………………....................3
1.2 Problem statement ...…………………………………………………….....4
1.3 Problem discussion………………………………………………………....4
1.4 Report Overview…………………………………………………………...4
2. Problem’s solution……………………………………………….....4
2.1 Method...…………………………………………………………………...4
2.2 Programming environments………………………………………………..5
2.3 Database analyzing, design and implementation…………………………8
2.4 Program’s structure analyzing and GUI constructing…………………….12
2.5 Database connections and code implementation………………………….14
2.5.1 Retrieving data from the database………………………………....19
2.5.2 Saving data into the database……………………………………...12
2.5.3 Updating records into the database………………………………..15
2.5.4 Deleting data from the database…………………………………...16
3. Conclusion………………………………………………………....17
4. References………………………………………………………...18
1. Introduction
This chapter gives a brief theoretical preview upon the database information systems
and goes through the essence of the problem that should be resolved.
1.1 Background
Most of the contemporary Information systems are based on the Database technology
as a collection of logically related data, and DBMS as a software system allowing the
users to define, create, maintain and control access to the database.
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The process of constructing such kind of systems is not so simple. It involves a
mutual development of application program and database. The application program is
actually the bridge between the users and the database, where the data is stored. Thus,
the well-developed application program and database are very important for the
reliability, flexibility and functionality of the system.
The so defined systems differentiate to each other and their development comprises
a great variety of tasks to be resolved and implemented.
The basic idea can be depicted on Figure 1.1 below:
Information System
Dbase Queries
Retrieve
U
S
Application DBMS Database
E Insert
Program
R
S Update
Database System
Delete
Such kind of system could be integrated with other Information systems or modules:
Accounting Information System (AIS) – designed to transform financial data into
information, or Management Information System (MIS) that provides decision-oriented
information to managers, and so on…
“Organizations depend on Information Systems in order to stay competitive.
Productivity, which is crucial to staying competitive, can be increased through better
Information Systems.” [2].
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1.2 Purpose
Employees are the backbone of any company; their management pays a major role in deciding the
success of the organization. Our “QUEUE(our group name)” understands this fact and therefore designed
a unique and 100% functional employee management system. This system uses employee management
software that helps in assembling, organizing and managing the information of the employees as required
by you. Every organization has different employee management issues to be addressed, so we design
customized employee information management system that could fit into your company’s requirement
frame.
Our “QUEUE” suggests employee management system is not solely for big companies, but every
organization that requires managing of their HR needs or workforce. Employee management software
makes easy for the employer to keep a track and check on the human resource department just by a click
of the mouse from anywhere in the world thus making the work extremely easy for people having offices
at different locations. It makes easy to monitor the workings of the employees and manage them.
Employee information management helps in deciding the future management needs and any changes that
has to be made for greater productivity. It keeps the records of the functions performed by the individual
employee playing a vital role at the time of performance appraisal. Employee management software can
carry out many functions like employee data analysis, employee monitoring, centralized employee
database, management of the time sheet, etc.
1.3 Scope
In fixed scope, when you send us the enquiry, we determine the scope of work for your project upfront and
give you pricing and timeline estimate upfront.
Once you send us the enquiry, we analyze the same and reply to you with our understanding of your
requirements along with the queries and suggestions. After we receive your clarifications, we finalize the
scope of work, determine which technology will be used for this project and give you the timeline estimate.
After we receive your approval on the pricing and timeline, we start with the project development which
begins with requirement analysis by the technical team. Once the project is complete in the local system,
we deploy the project. Subsequently our “QUEUE” team does the quality testing of your project and after
their approval we ask you to test the functionalities and after approval, we close the project.
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1.4 Definitions, Acronyms and Abbreviations
EMS
Employee Management System: It’s the windows application that is based on
managing the information of the employees.
Admin
Administrator: He has the authority to add/delete users.
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.NET Framework:
The .NET framework is part of Windows and provides a controlled environment for developing and
running applications.
Microsoft Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to
develop console and graphical user interface applications along with Windows Forms applications, web
sites, web applications, and web services in both native code together with managed code for all platforms
supported by Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Windows CE, .NET Framework, .NET Compact
Framework and Microsoft Silverlight.
C Sharp:
C sharp:
C# (pronounced "C-sharp") is an object-oriented programming language from Microsoft that aims to
combine the computing power of C++ with the programming ease of Visual Basic. C# is based on C++ and
contains features similar to those of Java.
C# is designed to work with Microsoft's .Net platform. Microsoft's aim is to facilitate the exchange of
information and services over the Web, and to enable developers to build highly portable applications. C#
simplifies programming through its use of Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Simple Object Access
Protocol (SOAP) which allow access to a programming object or method without requiring the programmer
to write additional code for each step. Because programmers can build on existing code, rather than
repeatedly duplicating it, C# is expected to make it faster and less expensive to get new products and services
to market.
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1.7. References
[1] – Begg Carolyn, Connolly Thomas, Database systems (a Practical approach
to
Design, Implementation, and Management), Addison-Wesley, an imprint of
Pearson Education, University of Paisley (U.K.), Fourth edition 2005
[2] – Bodnar George /Duquesne University/, Hopwood William /Florida Atlantic
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University/, Accounting Information systems, Eighth Edition, Prentice Hall,
Upper Saddle River, New Jersey .
[3] – Andersen Virginia, Access 2000: The Complete Reference, Blacklick, OH,
USA:
McGraw-Hill Professional Book Group, 2001,
http://site.ebrary.com/lib/vaxjo/Doc?id=5002842 (2006-05-25).
[4] – Andersson Tobias, [DAB744] C# Course Lectures, School of Mathematics
and
System Engineering, Växjö University.
[5] - http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/enus/
vbcon/html/vboritextboxctltasks.asp
This report’s documentation goes through the whole process of both application
program and database development. It also comprises the development tools have been utilized for
these purposes.
This system should consist of an application program, on one hand, and a database
(repository of data) on the other. The program should perform the basic operations
upon the database as retrieving, inserting, updating and deleting data. Any additional
functionality is a goal of a further module development.
It is a kind of strategy to start the development from designing and constructing the
database, as this structure will determine the further structure of the application
program.
The logical database model (tables, their content and the relationships between
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them) should respond to the given task and cover the basic requirements.
The Interface of the program should be user-friendly, and the program should be as
easy for use as it is possible.
Both controls and forms should logically and functionally be related within the
program and fully respond to the structure of the database.
Another problem is establishing the connections with the database, every time, when
a query is needed to be performed upon it. Exception-handling should also be taken into
an account during the system’s development due to eventual exceptions that may occur.
The 3rd chapter and its subsections will turn the attention to the method for resolving the problem,
the programming environments used for developing the system and the implementation of the
operations performed upon the database.
2. Overall Description
Minimum Requirements:
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- 1024 x 768 or higher-resolution display
- DVD-ROM Drive
- Additional features may require Internet access. Fees may apply.
Recommended:
2.2 GHZ or higher CPU, 1024 MB or more RAM, 1280x1024 display, 7200 RPM or higher hard drive Running on
Windows Vista: 2.4 GHz CPU, 768 MB RAM
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3. Problem’s Solution
This chapter involves some subsections that concern the basic scheme of resolving the
given task and comprise both the methods and tools of its development as well.
3.1 Method
At the very commencement, I proceeded to a decision to carry out the development of
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my task into the following steps:
1. Exploring the available development environments and techniques.
2. Database Analyzing.
3. Database design and Implementation.
4. Program’s Structure Analyzing.
5. GUI (Graphical User Interface) constructing.
6. Bringing all the stuff together (controls data binding and functions
implementation).
7. Tests.
Each one of these steps could be explained in some brief details as follows:
1. Exploring the available development environments and techniques
There is a lot of programming environments available to be used for such kind of
elaborations. The point is to choose such an environment that we will be able to operate
with in a convenient and easy way. This is more or less optional and individual process,
that depends on the developer’s experience as well.
2. Database Analyzing
It concerns all of the demands, put upon the database content and its functionality.
The database should be designed and implemented in a way that the user would expect
it to be.
3. Database design and Implementation
This step is tightly related with the previous one as it is completely determined by
the requirements, analyzed and discussed in step2.
4. Program’s Structure Analyzing
The application program as an interface between the users and the database should
be an accurate “reflection” of the database on the screen; hence a well analyzed and
defined structure is needed.
5. GUI Constructing
After analyzing the program’s structure and defining what it should consist of, a
graphical representation of this stuff is needed in order to enable the user to interact
with the data.
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Database Environment: Access is a typical environment for constructing
relational databases.
The database is the skeleton and the underlying framework of most of the
contemporary Information Systems. The evolution of the Database systems could be
divided into three phases: the Manual-filing System, the File-based systems, and the
Database and the Database Management systems (DBMS).
o The manual-filing system contains files of information, related to a
project, product, task, client, or employee and they are usually labeled
and stored in one or more cabinets. The cabinets may be located in the
secure area of the building, for safety. To facilitate the process of
searching and to find out what we want, more quickly, the different
types of item can be put in separate folders and they remain logically
related.
Actually, the needs of the contemporary industrial world could not be
covered or satisfied by using such kind of systems, and especially what
concerns their reliability and efficiency.
o Thus, we historically reach to the second phase of the Database
systems evolution – the File-based systems. This kind of systems had
been developed in response to the needs and demands of industry for a
more efficient data access [1]. The basic idea into the development of
this type of systems, is that each Department in an organization (for
instance) has an access to its own data (files) through application
programs. (Figure 2.1):
Figure 2.1 File-based information system
SALES
DATA ENTRY FILE HANDLING
FILES
AND REPORTS ROUTINES
FILE DEFINITION
CONTRACTS
DATA ENTRY FILE HANDLING FILES
AND REPORTS ROUTINES
FILE DEFINITION
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- Data Isolation: It is some difficult to access data, isolated
in separate files.
- Incompatibility of the file formats: It concerns the file
structure as a dependent on the programming language,
in which one the application program has been
developed and implemented, as the file’s structure is
embedded in the application program.
o After taking a new and more effective approach, the Database
and the Database Management System (DBMS) have been
created. Most of the contemporary systems are based on the
Database technology as a collection of logically related data and
the DBMS as a software system allowing the users to define,
create, maintain and control access to the Database.
The DBMS is a really powerful set of tools, enabling users to operate easily with
data into a database as: Inserting, Updating, Deleting and Retrieving data. It prevents
unauthorized access to the database and maintains the consistency of the stored data.
The DBMS also restores the data in case of hardware or software failure and reduces
the loss of data in this way.
MS-Access 2000 (Microsoft Access 2000) is a contemporary development
environment for dealing with databases:
Access is a computerized management system with relational database. The whole
information is stored in separate tables in one file. Such an information arrangement is
more or less convenient as we can view, add and delete information using online forms,
and search or retrieve by using queries.
The term “Database” comprises collection of objects (tables, forms, pages, queries,
macros) for manipulating, retrieving and storing data.
It is a very good advantage that the information (data) can be populated in different
tables (related to each other) and it is not necessary to store all data into one table. That
leads to a less redundancy of data and reduces the required disk storage space, and
speeds up processing as well. There are three relationships between the tables in a
database: (one-to-many), (one-to-one) and (many-to-many).
One of the mostly used relationships is the (one-to-many) type. If we have a main
table (so called Parent table) and some other obedient tables (so called Child tables),
then let us assume that the relationship between the parent table and the child tables is
of type (one-to-many). It means that every single record from the parent table could
have several records into each one of its related child tables. The tables are related by
their key-values. The key into the parent table is called primary key, and the keys into
its child tables are called foreign keys. The primary and the foreign key have the same
unique value.
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is the .Net Framework.
The main window of the Visual Studio and the .Net Framework basic architecture
could be seen on Figure 2: Visual Studio main window and Figure 3: Basic architecture
of .Net Framework – Appendix A, [4]:
Based on [4] we can say that the .Net Framework is a development of Microsoft
Corporation. In fact, a lot of efforts, time and investments have been spent on this
research and development.
As a class library, .Net Framework allows “cross-language” development and can be
used by any .Net language to perform different kind of tasks. There are approximately
40 languages with compilers for the .Net Framework, but only some of them are
supported by Microsoft Corporation: C#, Visual Basic .Net, C++/CLI, J#, Jscript .Net,
Eiffel, and some more.
“. Net has several designed intentions:
- Interoperability for existing code in COM libraries.
- Common Runtime Engine: languages compiled to an intermediate
language, Common Intermediate Language.
- Language Independence: using a Common Type System that defines all
possible data-type and programming concepts supported by the CLR
(Common Language Runtime).
- Base Class Library: also known, as the Foundation Class Library is a l
library of types available to all languages using .Net.
- Simplified Installation: for the Windows Platform, due to eliminating
registry setting and dll-problems.
- Security: by letting code execute in different trust levels.” [4].
The language of choice – C# as an object-oriented programming language, has a
procedural, object-oriented syntax based on C++. It includes some aspects and features
of other programming languages as: Java, Visual Basic and Delphi.
The developers of C# have emphasized on the language simplification as: fewer
symbolic and decorative requirements.
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Employees’ Basic Working History Time_Information
Details
Employee_ID_Number Employee_ID_Number Employee_ID_Number
Personal_ID_Number Company_Name Wroked_Hours
First_Name Employer_Name Off_Hours
Middle_Name Company_Employer_Address Days_off
Last_Name Company_Employer_Cellular_Phone Over_Time
Day_of_Birth Company_Employer_Office_Phone Extra_Days
Month_of_Birth Previous_Qualification w_From_Date_Day
Year_of_Birth Previous_Experience w_From_Date_Month
Cellular_Phone p_Start_Date_Day w_From_Date_Year
Home_Phone p_Start_Date_Month w_To_Date_Day
City p_Start_Date_Year w_To_Date_Month
Address p_End_Date_Day w_To_Date_Year
Postal_Code p_End_Date_Month
Qualification p_End_Date_Year
Current_Experience
Start_Date_Day
Start_Date_Month
Start_Date_Year
End_Date_Day
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End_Date_Month
End_Date_Year
Type_of_Employee
Salary Information Contact Person Holiday Information
Information
In this Figure we can distinguish six tables that the database consists of. All of the
relationships are of type: “one-to-many”.
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The primary key fields could be set to Auto-number data type as Access creates these
values in an ascending order to ensure that they are unique within a table. Some of the
fields should be “adjusted” to accept null-values. It is quite important to be done as it is
tightly related to the input fields of the application program. I decided to perform it in
the following way: those fields that are compulsory to be filled by the user I have set
not to accept any null-values of data and on the other hand, those ones, that can be left
blank, are set to accept null-values. It is easy to be performed by changing the Allow
Zero Length setting .
It is just needed to go to the desired field that has to be set, and switch between the
two options, offered into the “Allow Zero Length” field.
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Application Programming Interface (API).
A set of controls is used in order to reach the desired purpose, what concerns the
functionality of the application, including Labels, Text boxes, Combo Boxes, Data
Grid, Buttons, Group Boxes, Panels, Tab controls etc. All of these controls, available in
the program, are fitted to the corresponding forms that are used in the application.
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child table and one for establishing the connection between the parent and the child
tables).
Some details are going to be given about the functions, called by clicking upon the
“Save All” button. It firstly calls a set of functions, checking whether all of the required
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fields have been filled correctly, and if not then a message pops up on the screen
showing where there is insufficient information and whether we can proceed saving the
data or not. Afterwards, the responding save functions are called and the data is saved
into the database.
These Boolean variables are passed to an array and initialized with the values
returned by functions, checking the information of the fields. The values of these
functions actually determine into which table we can save records and into which – not,
and whether we can save records at the moment at all.
Into the code – snippet on Figure 20 it can be seen that if we have the sufficient
information for the parent table, then we can save it … Plus performing save operations
and upon those of the child tables, which relative fields on the form contain the
sufficient and necessary information for this purpose.
All of this stuff is really useless without the functions, operating with the database.
We can see how and the other functions operate. For simplicity, only one of them is
going to be shown -
All of these functions use the Get_Connection(Table_Name, ID) and
Get_Primary_Key(Table_Name, Primary_Key_Value, ID) methods, which ones are
very essential for the purposes, they have been constructed.
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_ Update Single Records into the database: This can be performed by clicking the “Update a Record” button - Figure
2.20:
The click-event calls the same update-functions as such as they were shown in the
figures, concerning all records-updating. Each “Update a Record” button calls the
appropriate function, responding to a certain data table
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not allow any data into the parent table to be deleted! I made up as simple approach as
it was possible: I have constructed a delete function for every single child table, erasing
all of the records of the selected employee. These functions go through the child tables
and when all data gets deleted, a function, erasing the record into the parent table, is
called as last.
Single Record Deletion: means that only the current record we want to delete,
shall be removed from the database. For this purpose, we can use the functional
buttons, related to a record in each data table.
All Records Deletion: To perform successfully this kind of operation upon the
whole data of an employee, existing into the database, we firstly need to delete
consequently all of his records into the child tables and then proceed to the
parent table.
4. Conclusion
In this report, an information system’s development has been presented. It was
emphasized on the basic steps, consequently taken during the project’s development
course as a particular attention was turned to the basic operative functions performed
upon the data into the database.
The report’s content comprises the whole task solution, starting from the programming
environments have been selected, going through the database, the application’s analyze
and construction, and finishing with the code-implementation and test-samples, shown
separately in Appendix chapters.
As a future work, some additional stuff could be implemented and integrated into the
application code making it much more reliable and flexible; especially what concerns a
pay-roll module, for instance.
Apparently, the role of such systems is basic and essential within each company that
wants to keep a really good control and record concerning its personnel data,
functionality and performance on all levels in its structure. Every organization, in
nowadays, has the necessity of managing its staff on a really good level as the staff has
definitely the greatest merit of building up a company as such as it is. The wellmanaged
staff means giving the appropriate financial award-ness and all kind of
benefits as such as they have been deserved. That’s why the development of such
systems is not just a programming business – a lot of people are ordinarily involved in
such projects and one of the basic requirements is the reliability of the system,
especially what concerns the storage of data and all of the operations that will be
performed upon it.
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Special Thanks
We convey a special thanks to our department and to our college. We also convey a special thanks
to websites; they have been helping a lot in doing the project.
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