Mr. A. Bada is the C. E. O. at the Cavendish halls of residence in Manchester. In order to constantly improve the accommodation office that controls the halls of residence, Mr A. Bada has hired Group 22 associates to computerise the accommodation office. The problem situation has arised through the need for a more efficient way of tracking and allocation of students in the halls of residence owned by Mr. A. Bada. The solution is in the form of information system.

For this purpose Group 22 has created a computerised database system for the purpose of room allocation and tracking of students. Group 22 have taken advantage of developments and advances in computer technology over recent to offer a relatively low cost solution Methods Employed To Tackle Problem (Briefly) In order to solve the problem brief group we had to visualise the business problem in terms of a model i. e. “… a representation that enables one to investigate its properties in a remote way”.

The model we used to develop the information system was the Information Life Cycle model. By using it’s various stages in the development of the business solution it allowed a good communication technique to be created between our analysts and designers within the group and to share with users to get feedback before the system is created itself. Once we had envisaged the problem using the model we then applied it to a database systems tool. In this case the database tool was created using Microsoft Access.

There were several database software’s available to Group 22 to use however in the Mr Bada’s account it was specifically stated that Microsoft Access was the preferred tool to create the information system. Another very good tool for database design is Oracle incorporating the programming language SQL (structured query language). Steps Undertaken In Project Development The Life Cycle of the project The Information Systems Life Cycle (Angell ; Smithson, 1991) Phase: Problem Definition Problem Identification The client, Mr Abbey needed to improve the efficiency in the office of the Cavendish Student Hall.

He decided to computerise the office and asked us to help him. His objectives were to be able to track down students and allocate room’s a lot more efficiently then using the current method. Information Requirement Determination Since the office was not computerised there was no existing database to improve so we had to start from the very beginning. What information did we require to be able to build Mr. Abbey a database? First of all we need information about the different rooms, we need information about the students and their parents details.

The user needs broadly were to include tracking of students, room allocation, Information on students, all to be available via queries or reports. Feasibility Study When we got this information we put together a database in Microsoft Access with tables, forms and queries. Mr. Abbey did not require having the staff and wages included in the database. The database system would need computers with minimum technical specification i. e. at least Pentium one processer, 32MB ram, etc. The operating system software would have to be compatible with database tool.

Staff would require minimal training in the usage of the Microsoft Access. I would also suggest some form of cost-benefit analysis to see exactly how efficiency would be improved. Possibly even R. O. C. E. (return on capital employed) with pay back period being calculated. It could be the client’s best interests to specify how much his style of management or structure may change in the near future therefore allowing our designers build some flexibility in to the system by anticipating change. Phase: Analysis

System Analysis We now analysed the solutions we came up with in the first phase in more depth. We made a logical model of the system both as Data Flow Diagram and as and Entity Relationship Diagram. The Data Flow Diagram shows the way the data is moved in the system, facilitating the client to understand the system and also us as analysers to create the database. The Entity Relationship Diagram is built by the entities in the system that stores the data we need to process and the relationships between them.