The SCOUR Project Search Contents Of Union’s Registry

Presentation Outline Main Objectives System Overview and Purpose  SCOUR  USE Functionality Current State of Project Future Work

Main Objectives Create an efficient system to facilitate scheduling meetings within the Union College Community Successfully implement SCOUR into the Union College Community SCOUR must be extremely stable and able to recover from a unpreventable crash

Current System Doesn’t exist! Professors must students and correlate an appropriate meeting time Current process can take hours

Benefits of an Electronic Scheduling System Saves time and aggravation Provides one medium for scheduling meetings rather than many different processes

System Overview Composed of two different programs SCOUR- a program that parses Union’s class roster pages and creates a database USE- a program that allows users to schedule meetings and search SCOUR (search contents of union’s registry)

SCOUR – Purpose Create a database based on the results of scouring through union’s class roster web pages Should run automatically with little or no human interaction Constantly run in order to keep database up to date with current class schedules Will provide vast amounts of data that can be used for various queries Class Roster Pages

USE- Purpose USE is a web-based application that allows users to interact with the SCOUR database  Allows users to interact without any knowledge of SQL  Comfortable GUI for computer illiterate users  Example Example

Functional Requirements Reliable database system  Back-up system if primary server goes down  Backbone of my project  Up to date information Easy to use web interface  Intuitive navigation

Queries Stored Procedures  Look up a students schedule  Find an optimal meeting time for a group of users  Find an open class room and reserve a time Must implement with current system  Print a transcript with out grades Endless Possibilities  Can search to see if anyone has the same class schedule as you, etc.  Find a list of students who have already taken a class you are in

Technology Implemented Red Hat Linux Java SDK  Applets  ACME GIF Encoder MySQL PHP

Current State of Project SCOUR complete  All the data can be obtained through SQL queries  Thoroughly tested and all the bugs have been worked out  Slow query problems solved with more advanced indexing system Average query time.01 seconds

Current State of Project (cont.) Currently working on USE system  Successfully implemented raster graphics to display complicated query results  Need to work on developing more queries to interact with the database Graphical Text Based

Future Work Database can serve as backbone for online advising system  Contains information on classes taken and gened credit Can serve as an host  Teacher and students can send out s to other users in a certain class Serve as an online calendar for users  Calendar like interface  Would help users manage time

Conclusion For the system to be fully functional and efficient  SCOUR must be up to date  Users must accept it and make it their primary way of scheduling  Must interact with other systems successfully such as Union’s web pages and room scheduling Union’s web pages must be correct and current  Must be reliable and fast

Questions? Any comments or suggestions about SCOUR or USE? Any comments or suggestions about presentation? Thank you for your time