Development of a framework for internet based education system

Development of a framework for Internet based education has demonstrated the use of Oracle tools for the use of delivery of education on the World Wide Web. This also has proved that for an efficient dynamic education scenario, the use of a database-based system with a proper retrieval system is required. We have designed the system on an Oracle backend system with Designer/2000. Developer/2000 helped us with the design and development of the system. Oracle Web Server 2.1 helped us with the retrieval of the web pages. The entire design of the system and the reasoning behind the system has been documented. Appendix A provides a glossary of currently used terminology in the field of Internet based systems. The Appendix B provides actual screen prints of the Designer/2000 phases of design, Developer/2000 graphical user interface screens and the actual code involved in the design and development of the system. The fact that the entire system is based on the Oracle Repository makes the system very dynamic in terms of the data and can be used to present the student with a course material rapidly

A theoretical and practical investigation of tools and techniques for the structuring of data and for modelling its behaviour

This thesis is about data and behaviour modelling for information system development. It has been sponsored at different times by two specialist consultancies: CACI Inc International and James Martin Associates. Initially I found problem areas in the field of system development by interviewing practitioners and by consultancy. These initial problem areas were whittled down to: action modelling, entity model clustering and a diagrammer. Action modelling is the modelling of detailed data behaviour using the same structuring concepts as data modelling. It was developed because of a lack of such analysis in systems development. Entity model clustering is about aggregating the entity types in a large entity model to abstract the essential meaning and to identify the most fundamental entity types. It was developed because of a need to summarise large entity relationship models for usability and comprehension. It has been used widely and has many benefits. A parallelism between data and activity modelling was developed as a result of the research into action modelling and entity model clustering. It needed the concepts derived from the other two areas to finally complete the theory, summarised as: every data modelling concept and structure has an exact equivalent in activity modelling and vice-versa. This theory gives a wholeness and completeness to modelling data and activity. A diagrammer was produced for the automatic production and manipulation of entity relationship diagrams from a base description. These diagrams are the basic tool of the data modeller; automating them saves time and potentially raises their accuracy. The main research problem was that few companies were willing to be guinea pigs, so most of the research was developed by thought 'games'. Most areas have been published in refereed publications as this was seen as the best way of establishing their academic credibility. All areas have been incorporated into or had an impact on James Martin Associates and their methodology Information Engineering, which provides a framework for coordinating the research areas. This research can best be techniques for improving summarised as the systems an attempt to find analysis process

From Data Capture to Code Generation: Tools for Entity Modeling

The entity-relationship approach to conceptual modelling has long been at the heart of information systems design. Most automated tools and CASE environments created to support database design tend to start at the conceptual modelling stage. This assumes that somehow the analyst has been able to deduce, from the initial requirements specification, what entities are to form part of the system and how they are interrelated. We bring together in this paper two strands of our research to present a set of prototype tools to support the major stages of database design, starting with the tasks of document analysis and data capture, and progressing through to code generation. We conclude with a proposal for an integrated environment for database design

The structure and function of diagrams in environmental design : a computational inquiry

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1989.Vita.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 252-261).by Stephen McTee Ervin.Ph.D

Grifon: a graphical interface to an object oriented database

The aim of the research outlined in this thesis is to establish what type of interface would be most suitable for object oriented databases. In particular it examines how graphical interface technologies might be used to present the database in a clearer form. In support of the research, a prototype interface system has also been developed to a commercial database to illustrate the practicality of the development of such an interface, and the increased effectiveness of the resultant system. The thesis outlines the features provided by the interface, the benefits accrued from such a system, and the problems associated with its development. Finally, it examines how such a system fits into the current work being carried out in the area of user interaction with databases

Maintaining consistency in XML-based configurations: A Pattern-driven approach

Several software artifacts are used along the software development process. These are used as input to perform tasks that produce new artifacts. Inconsistencies between related artifacts at different levels of abstraction can arise during the software development process. Specialization patterns abstract the structural description of a framework extension point, and can be used to qualify an element of the framework with a status and get a list of actions needed to change the element to a different status. A tool built using these patterns can then provide an overview of the framework status and identify the actions needed to reach a status of consistency. This thesis first identifies a source of inconsistencies between three artifacts that are generated and used in a framework (diagrams, XML schema and XML configuration files). Second this thesis shows how to adapt specialization patterns to validate XML configuration files. Finally this thesis provides a tool support that utilizes specialization patterns to guide the developer in the process of editing the configuration of the framework while maintaining the consistency of the three artifacts

An Investigation Into an Effective Method of Automatically Analysing Oracle Applications to Count Function Points

Function Point Analysis (FPA) is a synthetic software estimation metric used for computing the size and complexity of applications. It was first introduced by Allan. J. Albrecht during the mid-seventies, as a result of a lengthy research based on applications that were developed using COBOL and PL/1 programming languages. The purpose of this research· is to investigate the possibility, and the most effective method, of automatically performing a Function Point Analysis on Oracle applications that consist of Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports. The research revealed a seemingly lack of other researches on this topic. As FPA was invented a few years prior to the birth of Oracle, and consequently that of fourth-generation languages, it had to be tailored to suit the fourth-generation language Oracle tools used to develop the Oracle applications. This experiment provided a proof of concept and resulted in a software that achieved its objective of automatically calculating Oracle applications, consisting of Oracle Forms and Oracle Reports, in an a posteriori manner