CSE31MS Assignment 2000

Assignment Policies and Plagiarism

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Plagiarism is the process of claiming that work done by others has been done by you.

Please note that the Department has a policy on plagiarism in assignments and you should consult the relevant Departmental handout for full details.

Objectives

• Practice writing html files.
• Understand how to write simple server-side scripts using PHP.
• Practice writing simple database-driven web applications.
• Practice creating web applications with a high usability.
• Understand the difference between content, presentation and logic in web applications

Problem Overview

You are required to develop a small web application for a university department. The web application is being developed to enable lecturers to easily submit marks to a database and generate reports.

The web application should be intuitive to use and not abrasive to the eye. As it deals with sensitive information the application should implement some security measure that limits the user's ability to view and edit data.

The users of the system should be able to add, remove and edit marks through a web form. The users should also able to view marks they have already entered.

The database should include the following information:

• The actual grade percentage (ie 76%)
• The subject to which the mark pertains (i.e. CSE32MS)
• The component of the subject to which that the mark pertains (e.g. Exam, Assignment or Online Test)
• The id of student who achieved grade (i.e. 96431716)

The web application can be implemented in any manner as long as it is intuitive and easy to use. It must be capable of being displayed by the major browsers (ie Netscape 4 and IE 4).

Specific Tasks

Core Task

1. Design a set of database tables that are able to store student marks for subjects and the assessment components within those subjects.
2. Design a form or set of forms that allow an end-user to
   • Add a single mark to the database
   • Add a group of marks to the database (input data format is given below )
   • Edit a single mark in the database
   • Delete a single mark from the database
3. Design a web page that allows the end-user to view a set of marks. The user should be able to restrict the view to a set of marks for a subject or for a particular individual within that selected subject.
4. Design a set of web pages that allow easy navigation between all the forms and various pages in the web-application
5. Implement a system that forces the user to log in before they can interact with database in any way (including viewing data). Administrators should also be able to add new users relatively easily.
6. Develop an online help system for users of the product. The help system should be integrated into the web applications user interface. This should enable users of the system to readily access help information at any stage when utilising the system. The particular help can be some form of hyperlinked document or alternatively be placed in some form of popup dialogs. The help system should allow the user easy access to required information and should not cause the user to interupt their usage of the web application. The explanation for why a particular stratgey was chosen should be stated in the above report.
7. Develop a report production form. The form should allow the user to select a subject and subject component (ie subject="CSE32MS" and component="Assignment") and and produce a report. The report should be presented in a format that can be easily printed from the browser to an A4 printer. The report should include annotation at the top stating the subject and the subject component and then describe each students id and mark. A priimtive example is given below.

   Subject: CSE32MS
   Component: Assignment
   
   Student Id            Grade
   -------------------  -------
   123456789             30.0
   223456789             90.0
   323456789             70.0
   423456789             60.0
   ...
   

8. Write a report stating why you chose particular presentation strategies and why you avoided other alternative presentation strategies. This report must describe the ergonomic and usability benefits to the user of that choice of system design, including the method used to provide online help. You should not concentrate on purely technical reasons for design choices. There should also be a section in the report that states the assumptions made when producing the system. You should also include your database schema and reasons for your decision to structure the database tables in the manner used in the implementation.

Extension Tasks

• Extension 1: Extend the report generation so alphabetic grades are can be displayed instead of numerical values. The choice to report grades instead of numerical values should be given on the form. The conversion between numerical values and grades should be according to the following rule.

  Mark	Grade
  80-100	A
  70-80	B
  60-70	C
  50-60	D
  45-50	E
  0-45	F

• Extension 2: Extend the report generation further so that it can extract and report results that include multiple different components for each subject for a student. When a student doesn't have a grade for a particular component then a - is to be placed in area. An example of output is below.

  Subject: CSE32MS
  
  Student Id            Assignment   Online Test   Exam
  -------------------  ------------ ------------- ------ 
  123456789               30.0           -           -
  223456789               90.0         100.0       95.0
  323456789               70.0          60.0       89.0
  423456789               60.0          55.0       73.0
  ...
  

• Extension 3: Finally add the average grade of all components to the report. Assume that the average is computed giving equal weight to each component in producing the overall mark for the subject. The overall mark should be displayed as a numeric and alphabetic grade. i.e.

  Subject: CSE32MS
  
  Student Id            Overall Grade   Assignment   Online Test   Exam
  -------------------  --------------- ------------ ------------- ------ 
  123456789               F      10        30.0           -           -
  223456789               A      95        90.0         100.0       95.0
  323456789               B      73        70.0          60.0       89.0
  423456789               C      63        60.0          55.0       73.0
  ...
  

Med Format

The format used when adding groups of marks is utilised in an application called "med". Each file has one mark per line. The line consists of two fields delimited by a tab. The first field is the student number and the second field is the grade (as a percentage mark). A small sample follows.

98544685        80.0
98558380        90.0
98524435        90.0
98544194        90.0
98529875        90.0
98548364        90.0
98542108        70.0

It should be possible to submit a file in the med format through copying and pasting into a web-form or alternatively by a file submission - whichever you think is easier for the user.

Resources

There are a number of resources available to help you with the database and PHP programming required for the assignment.

• Local MS page.
• http://www.php.net/docs.php is a link repository for PHP documentation.
• Local PHP manual and documentation.
• Some examples of code for the laboratory web applications using PHP and MySQL.
• Web Tutorials about php or mysql.

Submission

Submission will be electronically managed via the commands submit and verify. To submit your assignment create a directory called "ms". Copy into the "ms" directory all the relevent files including database schema. (You will be shown how to extract the schema in a lab class).

Execute the command "submit MS ms" to send the contents of the directory to the submission site. You can check that the submission has been successful by issuing a "verify" command. If you make an incorrect submission resubmit using the "submit" command again. This will overwrite your previous submission.

If you have any difficulties with the operation of the " submit " command you should use "man submit" to check that you understand how to use the submit command.

Provisional Marking Scheme Outline

Total marks= 200