Web-Based Students’ Information System for Sabaragamuwa University

Abstract

The Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka (SUSL) is one of the youngest universities in Sri Lanka, which was established in 1996. The University now has a student population of around 1500, which has been divided into five faculties.The main administrative premises of the University are located at Belihuloya, and handle all the student information manually. It requires a lot of man-hours. Also, it consumes a considerable amount of time to update and search records. The main objective of this project was to develop a user-friendly, online student information system for the Sabaragamuwa University. To develop this system the traditional life cycle methodology was used. The system consists of personal information about the students and information with regard to examinations. The functional requirements were provided by the Center for Computer Studies of the Sabaragamuwa University. The interfaces and the database were designed to meet the given functional requirements. When the interfaces were designed consistency was maintained to provide a friendly environment to the users. The interfaces were developed using Macromedia Dream weaver MX with HTML. The database was created using Microsoft Access 2000. Then the database and the interfaces were connected using Active Server Pages (ASP) technology. ASP codes were implemented using VB Scripts. The system was developed on a Windows 2000 Professional platform which comes with built-in support for Internet Information Services (IIS). The outcome of this software project is a user-friendly, online student information system for the Sabaragamuwa University. This system meets all the requirements given by the Center for Computer Studies of the Sabaragamuwa University. The current system could be further enhanced by including staff details, a search facility and the facility for viewing individual examination results. The bandwidth of the Internet connection and the server performances are the dominant factors, affecting the efficiency of the system.