National Dairy Research Institute |
University Student Record Management Software |
"Were it not for Iron Speed Designer, we would have aborted
the project after the first two or three iterations."
- Baljeet Singh Matta, Technical Lead and Director of Light Speed Solutions
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University Student Record Management Software |
Light Speed Solutions
New Delhi, India
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University Student Record Management Software (USRMS) was developed for the National Dairy Research
Institute (NDRI), Karnal, India. NDRI is Asia's second largest dairy institute and is recognized as
a Deemed University. The application is used by students and teachers as well as the office staff for
all activities related to the students.
A nested edit table panel in an Iron Speed Designer application.
The USRMS application maintains student details, starting with the registration of a student for a
course offered by the institute. Admission is granted when the student clears the entrance test. The
application tracks the student's academic progress, hostel and other information as he completes his
degree courses. Various criteria like attendance, financial dues clearance, projects and assignments
submitted, and internal and external marks obtained are taken into consideration before the results
are declared. All criteria and validations are built into the application, making for a paperless
system.
When a student applies for registration to a particular course, the university office staff enters
this data in the application. Students are allotted a roll number and are informed about the admission
test. Students can view their results in detail by logging in. Successful candidates are required to
deposit requisite fees along with the necessary documents (a soft copy of these documents is stored
in the database). Roll number, course, faculty, hostel room, etc., are all allotted to the admitted
students.
As the students go through the courses, the teachers enter records of their attendance, daily and
weekly assignments, minor and major projects (or thesis in case of PhD) on a daily basis. Students
may view their progress online. However, they are denied access to other students' information.
Teachers are allowed to make changes in the data they enter for the next two days, after which only
the department heads or the administrator can edit it. Teachers are not allowed to add, view, or edit
data for a student or a subject they are not allocated.
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Application size and scope |
University Student Record Management Software utilizes one Microsoft SQL database, 70 tables and one view.
The Student Marks table has over 200,000 records in any given academic session. Approximately 500 users make
an estimated 20,000 transactions per month.
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The project |
The project took around two months to complete with two developers working on it. The requirements were
not well defined and the university committee kept adding "wish list" items, so the first month was spent in
developing and adapting the application to the changing requirements. Were it not for Iron Speed Designer,
we would have aborted the project after the first two or three iterations. Both the Iron Speed Designer
portion of the project and code customizations took one week each. Testing took another 15 to 20 days.
CSS menu buttons in an Iron Speed Designer application.
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Code extensions and customizations |
We developed some customizations for the application using AJAX and third-party controls like Telerik and
Crystal Reports. The commonly used customizations include:
| Add a Record to database.
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| Ajax Based Messages.
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| Store Session details.
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| Filter the data grid according to logged in user.
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Page layout customizations |
We designed three more design themes using the existing themes to enhance the themes for menus and layout.
We used the Telerik window control to make the application look like a Microsoft Windows application.
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Iron Speed Designer impact |
Without Iron Speed Designer, we could not have developed this application in a two-month timeframe with a two
person development team. The project would have been feasible, but given the changing requirements, it would
have taken at least six months, and we would have wasted time prototyping. Iron Speed Designer made
development of the application easy. Its important contributions are concurrence and data security, about
which the university committee had major concerns. This was not a development issue with Iron Speed Designer,
and we achieved it without writing a single line of code. Iron Speed Designer not only helped us do our project,
it helped us get it in the first place.
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Next steps |
The next phase of the application will include a Staff Module. We will process all transactions relating to
the university staff through the application.
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About the developer |
Baljeet Singh Matta
Technical Lead and Director
Baljeet Singh Matta holds a Master of Science in Software. He has been in the IT field for the past nine years.
He was Project Manager with TALENTS for three years before he joined Light Speed Solutions.
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