Software Development Process
In this project we have developed a prototype for Student information management system. For this, we have used the C++ language in order address the essential functional requirements as well as one of the Functional requirements. Using this prototype of student information management system, the users will be able to store different student data, display and update the records of a student after searching for the student data.
Different section of this report contributes to the discussion on software development process used for developing the prototype, techniques and structures used for developing the application.
For this project, the Agile software development process is selected and used. As the agile development methodology concentrates on continuous consideration to achieve a high degree of excellence or quality for the software or product to be developed as well as on the efficient design of the required solution. In addition to that, this development methodology also helps in easy adaptation of the changing requirements at every stage of the development process. Thus it can be said that, late changes in requirements for the software can be accommodated to meet the user requirements.
#include “stdafx.h”
#include<iostream>
#include<cstring>
#include<cstdlib>
#include<iomanip>
#include<windows.h>
#include<dos.h>
#include<conio.h>
#include<cstdio>
In order to store the student name, ID and the course mark the array data structures are used. The main reasons for using the array for this program is program is given below,
- The array data structure allows the program to store the defined data elements in it.
- This data structure allocates memory in a contiguous way. i.e. the memory locations for different elements or objects in contagious memory location. As this data structure does not allocate extra memory space required for the different elements of an object. In this way it helps in preventing the memory shortage or overflow of memory.
- Iteration between the elements inside an array using the index is faster when compared with any other data structure such as linked list.
- Storing elements in user desired dimensional array is another advantage. In other words, it can be said that we can use multidimensional array for storing data.
In the developed program Switch case control statement is used for directing the controls flow to the different segments of codes. As there are multiple conditions for the user to select and go for. Depending on the users input the program will perform different action based on the condition.
Usually when there are multiple conditions and the program required to execute a specific block of statements in case some certain condition is satisfied by the user input. When there are more than two operations. In case of smaller number of options we can use lengthy if..else-if statements. The main issue with if..else-if statements is it makes the program more complex with the increasing number of conditions.
We have used the if else, while loops for the implementation of the program. The while loops are used for prompting the user menu for the user to get out of the programme break the execution session.
setw() is predefined library function in C++. This function resided in #include<iomanip> header file used in the program. It is used to set field width. The function sets number of characters that will be used as the field width for the immediate insertion operation that will be performed by the code segment.
Array Data Structures
When the program is executed, the program will prompt a menu for the user from which they need to choose an option or an operation they need to complete. After the selection of the operation by the user the program control will go to the code segment for the chosen operation.
Following operations can be completed through the implemented program,
Enter 1 —->Create new Student record Table
Enter 2. —->Display all the Student Record
Enter 3. —->Enter New Student Record
Enter 4. —->Update the Record of a Student
Enter 5.———->Quit Program
After this the user enters their required options to complete the operation. Using the numeric input provided by the user, it will create a new student record table, display all the inserted record, enter another student record, updating a student record and quit the application.
The first essential functionality and option is for creating a new table for multiple number of students. After selecting this option, the user will be asked the number of students for which they need to enter the data (Name and the marks in five courses.). As this is a initial prototype we have restricted the maximum number of students to 30 by defining a macro with the pre-processor directive #define. The #define is used to create an entity that can be globally used for a program and substituted by the macro pre-processor. It is also efficient as it is processed by compiler the along with the pre-processor and takes time that is similar to simple text replacement in the total program body.
Another essential functionality is displaying the previously provided data through the option 2. When the users select the option 2, the program iterates through the created objects and data array in order to fetch the data of the student and display it on the screen.
The next option is to enter a new record with existing table. At the execution time of the program, if the user needs to add a new record then, user will choose the option 3. Then next steps for inserting data into array.
The last option is for updating the record for a specific student by choosing the ID of the Student. After this, the field options that needs to be changed will be asked by the program. When the user provides the updated data it will be updated for that specific data field.
In this program we have used array structure is used to store the data of the students, in future I will try for some efficient data structure. The application helps a user to
- Add records of different students and their scores in five different courses.
- The user will be able to see all the record of all students by choosing the appropriate action.
- User can update or modify any students record using the ID of the Student.
Switch Case Control Statement
The reason behind this can be stated as, the array dimension is fixed at the time it is created which cannot be changed later. It also unnecessarily occupies the memory space proportional to the size of the array. Thus if these space is not required at the later stage, it will be waste of the memory space. In order to retrieve a specific data or delete one, the application have to traverse complete array which is quite time consuming in case the array is very large in size and the data is at the end of array.
Following are the screenshots which depicts the execution of different operations,
Screen shot1: Displaying Menu for the user
Screenshot 2: Asking user for the total number of students
Screenshot 3: Entering data for a student
Screenshot4: Displaying student data
Screenshot 5: asking user for ID to update record
Screenshot6: Providing Edit option for the student
Screenshot 7: Editing the name of the Student
At first in order to provide a menu for the user and related operations we tried to implement the menu options either using if-elseif control statement or switch case statement. After comparing the performance and runtime factors for both the control flows we determined to use the switch case.
We used the switch case control statement as it is easier for the compiler or the programmer to read when compared to the equivalent if-else statement. From the aspect of execution, the switch case statements are more efficient lengthy if-else statement. In addition to that this makes the debug process much easier and to maintain the code. For any structure of nested “if else if” control statements leads to deep nesting, making the compilation process more difficult.
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Additionally, an optimized implementation of the controls statements may provide faster execution for a specific function and leading to the improved and faster performance when compared to if-else statements. The reason behind this can be stated as it is often implemented using indexed branch table in memory.
In future to improve the performance of the application we will use linked list. It is dynamic data structure thus it may grow and shrink while executing the application by allocation of the memory or freeing the previously allocated memory. Thus it will be lead to avoiding the memory wastage as the user does not have provide the initial size of linked list.
Insertion, modification and deletion of the data nodes is easier compared to other data structures. Contrasting with array we do not have to move the data elements stored in the linked list for the operations like, insertion or deletion. In case of the linked list, it is required to update the address of the new node in next pointer so that it can traverse.
In future the application can be improved by adding the file I/O operation to store the data of students. Thus use of file I/O operations will help the user to generate report based on the course results, their ID and names. Filtering of the marks to sort the grades of the students, exporting the results into different formats (like the excel and PDF) can be added to the applications as the features for the application.
Integration with the other information system in the organisation. As the schools or institutions can use multiple other information systems thus in order to improve the overall functionality and data flow from and to the other information can also be added to the developed application.
Conclusions
As the application is only a prototype the application is developed using the minimal requirement so that the essential functionalities for the student information management system can be easily addressed. The improvements and add on features for this application will be very helpful for the clients to manage the records of the students. With the improved functionalities the application will be able to meet all the user requirements. In future there will be feature amendments such as validation of the user input, limiting concurrent update of the student records and so on.
Eyolfson, J. and Lam, P., 2016. C++ const and Immutability: An Empirical Study of Writes-Through-const. In LIPIcs-Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (Vol. 56). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.
García Sánchez, J.D. and Stroustrup, B., 2015. Improving performance and maintainability through refactoring in C++ 11.
Gurfinkel, A. and Navas, J.A., 2017, August. A Context-Sensitive Memory Model for Verification of C/C++ Programs. In International Static Analysis Symposium (pp. 148-168). Springer, Cham.
Schuessler, C. and Gruber, R., 2016. A Traversable Fixed Size Small Object Allocator in C++. arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.01667.
Thielecke, H., 2014. An introduction to C++ template programming.
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