 | Goal Design and implement the
graduate student database for the Computer Science department.
Application description: (Some
requirements for this database have been discussed in the midterm exam.) The
process of applying to graduate study and completing the graduate study has
several steps.
- Students applied for graduate admission need to fill in various forms:
Application form (this is different for international and domestic students)
- These forms are available for download at
http://gradschool.nmsu.edu/admit-form.html (domestic) and
http://www.nmsu.edu/~ip/ISSS/Admissions.php (foreign). For your
convenience, I distributed the forms in the class.
- This form, together with the transcripts of the applicant, and other
documents are sent from the graduate school (domestic) and international
office (international) to the CS departments. These documents contain the
following information:
- TOEFL score (required) - the TOEFL type of test is included
in this form. This can be PAPER, CBT, or Internet. The international
office converts the score to the previous standard.
- GRE score (optional) - the type of GRE test is recorded
(PAPER or CBT). There are three components of a GRE test: Verbal,
Qualitative, and Analytical.
- Transcript - List of courses (and grade) that the student
obtained in his/her previous studies.
- Other information that the applicants would like to
submit such as reference letters, publications, etc.
- The CS department evaluates the applications and decides that the
applicant should be
- ACCEPT with no condition;
- ACCEPT with conditions (e.g. the student needs to take and
pass the qualification exams, the students need to take some
deficiencies, etc.); or
- REJECT with some explanations as to why the application is
rejected.
- For applications requesting financial assistantship, a
decision (OFFER IN FULL/OFFER IN HALF/NOT OFFER) is also made.
- The decision will be sent to the applicants and the original
application packet (with the decision) will be sent back to the graduate
school or the international office. The CS department
stores a copy of all applications for a period of one semester. Accepted
applicants are stored in the "PENDING" cabinet and will be moved to the
"ACTIVE" cabinet after the students arrive at NMSU. Normally,
applications packets will be removed after one semester from the PENDING
cabinet if the student declines to accept the offer.
- For an active student, his/her file will
be updated regularly. The following information need to be updated:
- Advisor (initially, the student will be assigned an
advisor but he/she can request a change of advisor anytime he/she
would like to do so; the date of advisor's change should be kept as
well).
- Special classes that the student takes (individually
basis); for each of this class, a contract needs to be filled in. This
contract needs to have the following information: title (or topic) of
the class, the goal, and the specific deliverables of the class.
- Information about the committee members of each
student. For a Master student, the committee consists of three
members: two professors from the CS department and an external
professor. For a Doctoral student, the committee has three CS
faculty and one external professor.
The database will allow the faculty and staffs of the department to
 | Keep track of application status: for this purpose, the
information of a referral sheet (included in the package) should be
enough;
|
| Keep track of applicants' academic history: for this purpose, the
name of the college, from which the applicant graduated, and his/her
final GPA are enough; |
| Monitor graduate students' progress: since the transcript of the
student is in the university database, there is no need for storing
the NMSU transcript of the student; it is however important to
notify students on the outstanding deficiencies and the special study
classes;
|
The system should allow different groups of users to use:
| Database entry: this group of users is responsible for
entering the information about the applicants. This group of users
should not have the privileges to change the status of an application.
Nor should they have the permission to modify records whose status has
been updated. |
| Admission chair: this group of users is responsible for
evaluating of applications; this group of users should have the
privileges to update the status of an application as well as the
offering of assistantship. |
| Applicants: the system should also allow an applicant to view
his/her status of application. |
Requirements Each team is required to
(a) write up a report detailing the database design;
and (b) develop a fully functional database for use in admitting and monitoring
graduate students. Each team should submit a report on the
database design consisting of an E/R diagram with constraints. The report
should clearly identify
- Entity sets, each their attributes and key(s)
- Relationships , each with its attributes, the set of
entity sets involved in it, and its multiplicity
- Translation of the E/R diagram into relational schema.
Make sure that your relation database does not contain redundancy. The report should
also include
the SQL commands for
creating the relations/tables as described in Item 3.
The database design should be done by November 8 and submitted as
Project - Part 1.
Your system should be available for use by December 14. Each team
should schedule a system demonstration before the final exam. The evaluation
of the database will based on the following criteria: (a) functionality: it
should satisfy the requiement as described in the description; (b) user friendly interface; and
(c) easy to use. Follow this
link
for the instruction on creating database application with PHP. Oracle and PHP
can be used. You can also use JAVA and JSP. |
