PROJECT SECME

Concept of Operations

EEL5881 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING FALL 2002

 

Modification history:

Version

Date

Who

Comment

v0.0

08/15/00

G. H. Walton

Template

v1.0

09/29/02

Carthik Sharma

Initial version

v1.1

09/30/02

Majid Khan

Modified as per team review

 

Team Name: TEAM SECME

Team Members:

Contents of this Document

The Current System

The Proposed System

The Current System

The current system allows the coordinators at various schools in the Central Florida region to view the details of the annual competition, the Saturday workshops, and register for the annual SECME Regional competition organized by Minority Engineering and Computer Science Programs (MECSP) at UCF. The coordinators of the various schools have to access a website, http://mecsp.cecs.ucf.edu/secme/secme1.htm and from there, they have access to the registration form that enables them to register for the annual competitions which consists of 10 individual contests.

The Current system is seen to be unsatisfactory by the MECSP, since it is cumbersome to use, for both the coordinators and the MECSP program managers, and the format in which the information is retrieved is useless, since the data has to be again entered manually in the format in which it is required.  The database for the current system is hosted by the course development and web services section of UCF. The website is such that it can be updated only by the professionals at the College of Engineering and Computer Science Web Services team, and so the utility of the website is limited to a great extent.

The Proposed System: Needs

The proposed system should be able to

1.        Enable the school coordinators to log into the system, view the required information and register their schools’ students for the competitions and/or workshops, and also modify the registration at will.

2.        Enable the MECSP SECME program organizer to view the registration information in the required format, and update the information on the webpage.

3.        Enable the school coordinators and the SECME organizers to review registration information

4.        Inform the MECSP organizers whenever data is added or modified, through email.

5.        Provide a secure method for the Organizers and the Coordinators to access the system, by using a system of passwords.

The Proposed System: Users and Modes of Operation

Users:

1)      MECSP Organizer:

    1. The organizer will have an email address, a username and a password and all correspondence will be directed to this email address.
    2. The organizer will be able to :

1)       define the competition and workshops.

2)       Define school coordinators and their information.

3)       View the details of the school coordinators, for the different schools.

4)       Notify via email all participants about the upcoming workshop or annual competition. All email will have a carbon copy sent to MECSP organizer as well.

5)       View information about all the participating schools and their students in relation to the competition or a workshop.

6)       View summary of whole annual competition with school, the events and the students within each event in a tabular format.

7)       View summary of competition filtered by school type providing information on school, events and the students within each event in a tabular format.

8)       View registration information, with the ability to view all submissions/updates received from a specified date, till a specified date.

9)       View student information with respect to Math level of the students.

2)       School Coordinator :

a.       The will be two school coordinators for each of the participating schools, and each school coordinator will have an id and password, with each school having a single user id, and password, also, each school coordinator will have an email address that will be used to notify him/her about upcoming events like annual competition and workshops

b.      The Coordinators will be able to :

1)       Register for the annual competition and workshop online.

2)       View/modify information about participants of their schools alone.

3)       Review and modify the participant’s information before completing the registration process.

4)       Modify participant’s information after it has been posted for registration process but before the registration deadline.

5)       Receive confirmation of submission/modification of data.

Modes of Operation :

1)       Registration Mode :

The school coordinators will be able to register for the various event by specifying the required data. The Program will store this information in  the database after confirmation from the coordinator as to the correctness of the data.

2)       Modification Mode :

            The school coordinator can modify, or update the data entered for their respective schools.

3)       Data Retrieval Mode :

The MECSP organizer will be able to retrieve the registration information pertaining to a specified set of dates from the database, in one of the specified formats.

4)       Log-in Log-out Mode :

            The system will allow the user to do any of the above only after validating them using a user id and a password.

5)       Information Updating Mode :

                    The MECSP users can update the information offered on the website , define the competitions and the workshops.

 

The Proposed System: Operational Scenarios

In the scenario where a user signs in using the user id and password, the system will allow access to the registration forms or the data stored in the database only if the password and the user id are valid. A risk in this is when a user forget his/her password, in such a case, the password will be sent to the user through email, upon receipt of a request for password retrieval.

During registration, the school coordinators will be prompted for data, and to avoid the risk of wrong data being stored in the database, the user will be shown a preview of the data to the stored in the database, and the record will be added or modified only upon receipt of confirmation.

During retrieval of data by the MECSP organizers, the data will be presented in one of the predefined styles, as per request. An inherent risk in this is the difficulty in defining the future needs, with regard to the format of the retrieved data. However, the system allows for flexibility in this regard, and the data can be retrieved in the required new format by programming the system.

The Proposed System: Operational Features

Must Have:

1.        Ease of operation, for both kinds of users.
 

2.        A system of password enabled security for both types of users.
 

3.        The school coordinators should be able to review the registration information that they entered before submitting it to be entered in the database
 

4.        The School Coordinators should be able to modify or update existing school records on a later date, before the deadline for registration.
 

5.        The MECSP organizers should be able to define the school users.
 

6.        The MECSP Organizers should be able to retrieve the registration data in a useful, friendly format, with an emphasis on ease of interpretation.
 

7.        The MECSP Organizers should receive automatic notification when data is updated in the system.
 

8.        The MECSP Organizers should be able to define competitions and workshops.
 

9.        The School Coordinators should be able to post queries from the website.

Would Like to Have:

        1.        The users should be able to connect to the SECME national website from this system.

        2.        The MECSP users should be able to retrieve information in any desired format, besides the formats decided upon at the present time.

 

The Proposed System: Expected Impacts

The proposed system, when implemented is expected to improve the efficiency of the MECSP, at UCF, in conducting the annual competition and the workshops. It will eliminate the need to manually re-enter the data obtained from the registration forms, and also the need to approach the web site maintenance team each time the information on the website needs to be updated. The School Coordinators are expected to be able to register for the events in an easier fashion, and also in a more accurate fashion, since they will be able to preview the data they are entering into the database. The proposed system will also have a more user friendly interface which will simplify the task of registrations for the organizers, and the school coordinators, some of whom have just the basic computer skills.

The Proposed System: Analysis

Expected Improvements:

1.        Ease of entry and retrieval of data.

2.         Ease of management of registration process through the facility to provide email notifications on registration, and a facility to correspond through email.

3.         Availability of the registration information in more useful, practical, user defined formats.

4.        Security of Data as a result of the use of the user id, password system.       

Disadvantages:

                1.     The users will be totally reliant on the web to access their information. It might be disadvantageous in case web access is temporarily down.

Limitations:

                1.        Due to the inherent nature of the web services at UCF, the supporting staff for the website keeps changing, and so future maintenance of the website will be problem.

                2.        The registration data can be retrieved only in a few pre-specified formats, dynamic manipulation of the data on the site is not included in the scope of the project.

Risks:

1.        An inherent risk in this project is the possibility of the system crashing at a critical time. The Servers used are public servers, used by most or at least many of the UCF                                  services.  

Alternatives and Tradeoffs:

                1.        The existing system is an alternative, but the inherent problems in the existing system limit its usefulness as a productivity tool

                2.        The other alternative, that of using a manual registration system, using the fax and telephone systems is too cumbersome and inefficient.

 

Template created by G. Walton (GWalton@mail.ucf.edu) on March 28, 1999 and last modified on August 15, 2000.

This page last modified by Santhosh Grandai(santhu79@hotmail.com ) on October 01, 2002