Course Design Report

Course Design Report

College: 信息与电子工程学院

Class: 172

Name: SAM SOPHEAP

ID: 9170214016

Report Title: Employee Management System

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Contents
ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................3
I. REQUIREMENT.................................................................................................4
II. FUNCTION LIST................................................................................................5
III. TASK LIST.......................................................................................................6
IV. DATABASE DESIGN......................................................................................8
V. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTS.................................................................................11
VI. RUNNING RESULT......................................................................................16
VII. SUMMARY.....................................................................................................18

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Abstract

This report includes a development presentation of an information system for

managing the staff data within a small company or organization. The system as such

as it has been developed is called Employee Management System. It consists of

functionally related GUI (application program) and database. The choice of the

programming tools is individual and particular.

Keywords
Information system, Database system, DBMS, parent table, child table, table

fields, primary key, foreign key, relationship, sql queries, objects, classes, controls.

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I. Requirement

This report gives a brief theoretical preview upon the database information

systems and goes through the essence of the problem that should be resolved.
Most of the contemporary Information systems are based on the Database

technology as a collection of logically related data, and DBMS as a software system

allowing the users to define, create, maintain and control access to the database. The

process of constructing such kind of systems is not so simple. It involves a mutual

development of application program and database. The application program is

actually the bridge between the users and the database, where the data is stored.

Thus, the well-developed application program and database are very important for

the reliability, flexibility and functionality of the system. The so defined systems

differentiate to each other and their development comprises a great variety of tasks to

be resolved and implemented.

The basic idea can be depicted on Figure 1.1 below:

Figure 1.1 Database information systems - principal scheme

Information system suggests a computer technology to be used in order to

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provide information to users in an organization (for instance), as for the purposes of

data transformation into useful information; computer hardware and software are

designed and used [2]. A particular case is the Human Resources Information System

development. This kind of systems are responsible for storing data of the staff within

an organization and generating reports upon request.

Such kind of system could be integrated with other Information systems or

modules: Accounting Information System (AIS) – designed to transform financial

data into information, or Management Information System (MIS) that provides

decision-oriented information to managers, and so on… “Organizations depend on

Information Systems in order to stay competitive. Productivity, which is crucial to

staying competitive, can be increased through better Information Systems.” [2].

II. Function List

At the very commencement, I proceeded to a decision to carry out the

development of my task into the following steps:

1. Database Analyzing.
It concerns all of the demands, put upon the database content and its

functionality. The database should be designed and implemented in a way

that the user would expect it to be.

2. Database design and Implementation.
This step is tightly related with the previous one as it is completely

determined by the requirements, analyzed and discussed in step 1.

3. Program’s Structure Analyzing.
The application program as an interface between the users and the database

should be an accurate “reflection” of the database on the screen, hence a

well analyzed and defined structure is needed.

4. GUI (Graphical User Interface) constructing.
After analyzing the program’s structure and defining what it should consist
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of, a graphical representation of this stuff is needed in order to enable the

user to interact with the data.

5. Bringing all the stuff together (controls data binding and functions

implementation).
The next step that should be taken is connecting the program with the

database and performing the necessary functionality upon all of the

controls.
6. Tests
To ensure that everything works properly and as it has been expected, test

performance has to be done upon the system’s functionality.

III. Task List

I decided to use the Access Database Environment as a Database

Management System and C# as a programming language for developing my

project. Before proceeding to the explanatory notes of how I have developed the

software, I would like to take a preview upon the programming tools

(environments) that have been used during this project’s development course.
 Database Environment: Access is a typical environment for
constructing relational databases. The database is the skeleton and the

underlying framework of most of the contemporary Information

Systems. The evolution of the Database systems could be divided into

three phases: The Manual-filing System, the File-based systems, and the

Database and the Database Management systems (DBMS).

- The manual-filing system contains files of information, related to

a project, product, task, client, or employee and they are usually

labeled and stored in one or more cabinets. The cabinets may be

located in the secure area of the building, for safety. To facilitate

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the process of searching and to find out what we want, more

quickly, the different types of item can be put in separate folders

and they remain logically related. Actually, the needs of the

contemporary industrial world could not be covered or satisfied

by using such kind of systems, and especially what concerns

their reliability and efficiency.

- Thus, we historically reach to the second phase of the Database

systems evolution – the File-based systems. This kind of systems

had been developed in response to the needs and demands of

industry for a more efficient data access [1]. The basic idea into

the development of this type of systems, is that each Department

in an organization (for instance) has an access to its own data

(files) through application programs. (Figure 2.1):

Figure 2.1 File-based information system

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IV. DATABASE DESIGN

The database for the system should include information of company’s staff,

respectively of its employees. The data is subdivided into the following groups:

Employees’ Basic Details Working History Time_Information

Employee_ID_Number Employee_ID_Number Employee_ID_Number

Personal_ID_Number Company_Name Employer_Name Wroked_Hours Off_Hours
First_Name Company_Employer_Address Days_off
Middle_Name Company_Employer_Cellular_Phone Over_Time
Last_Name Company_Employer_Office_Phone Extra_Days
Day_of_Birth Previous_Qualification w_From_Date_Day
Month_of_Birth Previous_Experience w_From_Date_Month
Year_of_Birth p_Start_Date_Day w_From_Date_Year
Cellular_Phone p_Start_Date_Month w_To_Date_Day
Home_Phone p_Start_Date_Year w_To_Date_Month
City p_End_Date_Day w_To_Date_Year
Address p_End_Date_Month
Postal_Code
p_End_Date_Year
Qualification
Current_Experience
Start_Date_Day
Start_Date_Month
Start_Date_Year
End_Date_Day
End_Date_Month
End_Date_Year
Type_of_Employee
Gender
Marital_Status

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Salary Information Contact Person Holiday Information

Information
Employee_ID_Number Employee_ID_Number Employee_ID_Number

Monthly_Salary c_First_Name Holiday

Monthly_Money_Currency c_Middle_Name h_From_Date_Day

monthly_Taxes c_Last_Name h_From_Date_Month

monthly_Deductions c_Cellular_Phone h_From_Date_Year

monthly_Insurances c_Home_Phone h_To_Date_Day

ms_From_Date_Day c_City h_To_Date_Month

ms_From_Date_Month c_Address h_To_Date_Year

ms_From_Date_Year

ms_To_Date_Day

ms_To_Date_Month

ms_To_Date_Year

Weekly_Salary

Weekly_Money_Currency

weekly_Taxes

weekly_Deductions

weekly_Insurances

ws_From_Date_Day

ws_From_Date_Month

ws_From_Date_Year

ws_To_Date_Day

ws_To_Date_Month

ws_To_Date_Year

I have constructed a database that consists of six data tables. There will be one

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main table (parent table) and five child tables, related to each other. Patently, for this

purpose the necessary primary and foreign keys should be defined into the

responding tables. The so defined structure above is made up in conformity with the

user’s needs and demands. Each employee of the staff is intended to have several

records, responding to his Working History, Contact Person Information, Salary

Information, Time Information and Holiday Information, and only one record

containing his basic information within the company – his personal details as: date of

birth, gender, marital status, address and phone details, and his current working

record. An employee is supposed to have not only one record of his Working history,

or his Contact Person Information…. For instance, if we take a look to the Time

Information data table – an employee may have several records in case he has some

experience within the current company. It is absolutely the same with the Salary

Information, Contact Person Information and Holiday Information data tables.

The primary key fields could be set to Auto-number data type as Access creates

these values in an ascending order to ensure that they are unique within a table. Some

of the fields should be “adjusted” to accept null-values. It is quite important to be

done as it is tightly related to the input fields of the application program. I decided to

perform it in the following way: those fields that are compulsory to be filled by the

user I have set not to accept any null-values of data and on the other hand, those

ones, that can be left blank, are set to accept null-values.

It is just needed to go to the desired field that has to be set, and switch between

the two options, offered into the “Allow Zero Length” field. In the example, shown

above, the Personal_ID_Number field is set not to allow any null-values thus its

field’s length cannot be zero as its value is quite essential for identifying an

employee as an individual and distinctive person. That has been considered and done

for a kind of convenience as the user would wish not to enter all of the data at the

moment, and come back later

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V. SYSTEM IMPLEMENTS

After getting the database prepared, application program should be constructed

and implemented in some programming environment to enable the users to

communicate with the database.

Graphical User Interface (GUI) is intended to be built up as a basic structure of

the program. The first general advice when constructing GUIs is to “know thy users”

as there is a large number of rules and requirements, concerning the whole process of

GUI development.
A set of controls is used in order to reach the desired purpose, what concerns the

functionality of the application, including Labels, Text boxes, Combo Boxes, Data

Grid, Buttons, Group Boxes, Panels, Tab controls etc. All of these controls, available

in the program, are fitted to the corresponding forms that are used in the application.
This subsection represents the main approach that has been made up in order to

establish the connections with the database:

The dataGrid control could be previewed as first:
// dataGrid1
this.dataGrid1.CaptionText = "Employee Data";
this.dataGrid1.DataMember = "";
this.dataGrid1.HeaderForeColor = System.Drawing.SystemColors.ControlText;

this.dataGrid1.Location = new System.Drawing.Point(8, 64);

this.dataGrid1.Name = "dataGrid1";
this.dataGrid1.ReadOnly = true;
this.dataGrid1.Size = new System.Drawing.Size(928, 176);
this.dataGrid1.TabIndex = 8;
this.dataGrid1.CurrentCellChanged += new

System.EventHandler(this.dataGrid1_CurrentCellChanged);

That’s the Initialization of the basic properties of this control. In order to perform
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some operations upon the functionality of the control (for instance: when the current

cell’s index changes…or when the control’s size is exceeded etc.), I constructed a

function.
As it is shown in Figure 2.6, when the user exceeds the control’s borders, an

exception is instantly thrown, warning about the error has occurred:

Figure 2.6 Trying to go beyond the control’s ends

The table’s end is enclosed with a red marker - Figure 2.6. The following

message box in Figure 2.7 pops up on the screen every time when we try going

beyond this limit by clicking outside the control’s borders.

F
Figure 2.7 Warning message
For this purpose, a DataAccessClass has been created and placed into a separate

file – “DataAccessClass.cs”. In this class, not only functions dealing with retrieving

of data are included, there are also functions for saving data into the database,

updating data, etc. On a first time, we have to manage to the connection with the data

source, which one is the database (“Employees_Database.mdb”):

Figure 2.8 Preparing to get a connection established

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Figure 2.8 Preparing to get a connection established

There are few steps until the data source get connected to the application program’s

components:
- Specifying the connection string:

public string conString=@"Provider=Microsoft.Jet. OLEDB.4.0;Data

Source=..\\..\\Employees_Database.mdb";
- Making up a query-string to be performed upon the database:
this.select_query1=" select* from Employees_Details order by

Last_Name,First_Name";
- Creating a data adapter to communicate between the dataset and the

database using the already specified connection- and query-strings:

public OleDbDataAdapter dAdapter; … dAdapter=new

OleDbDataAdapter(this.select_query1, con);
A bit more about the data adapter: “The ADO.NET DataSet is a memory-

resident representation of data that provides a consistent relational programming

model independent of the data source. The DataSet represents a complete set of data

including tables, constraints, and relationships among the tables. Because the DataSet

is independent of the data source, a DataSet can include data local to the application,

as well as data from multiple data sources.

- Creating the Dataset to be populated with data:

public DataSet dSet;

… dSet=new DataSet();
- Populating the Dataset with data using the so constructed Data-adapter:

dAdapter.Fill(dSet,"Employees_Details");
After getting the connection established and populating the desired data-fields

into the Dataset, we can connect the Datagrid control with the Dataset by explicitly

showing the data source - Figure 2.9:

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Figure 2.9 Connecting the Datagrid with the Dataset control

We also call the Currency Manager Set Function - Figure 2.10:
k

Figure 2.10 Initializing the CurrencyManager for the Parent data-table

“The CurrencyManager derives from the BindingManagerBase class. The

BindingManagerBase enables the synchronization of data-bound controls on a

Windows Form that are bound to the same data source. For example, suppose that a

form contains two TextBox controls that are bound to the same data source but to

different columns. The data source might be a DataTable that contains customer

names, while the columns might contain the first and last names. The two controls

must be synchronized in order to display the correct first and last names together for

the same customer. The CurrencyManager, which inherits from the

BindingManagerBase class, accomplishes this synchronization by maintaining a

pointer to the current item in the data source. The TextBox controls are bound to the

current item so they display the information for the same row. When the current item

changes, the CurrencyManager notifies all the bound controls, so that they can

refresh their data. Furthermore, you can set the Position property to specify the row

in the DataTable that the controls point to. To determine how many rows exist in the

data source, use the Count property. The Current property returns the current item in

the underlying list. To change the current item, set the Position property to a new

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value. The value must be greater than 0 and must be less than the value of the Count

property.
One thing should always be taken into an account when we perform such

operations: We are not allowed to perform a data binding operation more than once at

a time; thus, a function should be made up for clearing the control’s collection of any

data bindings. A (“control.DataBindings.Clear();”) function is called every time

when we commit to a data binding operation upon a control. Otherwise, an exception

would be thrown and we have just to quit the program. Such kind of exceptions are

not only undesirable, they are not allowable in the practice as well. After loading the

available data records from the database, we are already able to take a preview upon

them:

Figure 2.11 Data records uploaded into the Datagrid control

The data records - Figure 2.11 concern only the main data table Employees_Details

as we are now in the first and second tab-pages of the tab-control. If we switch to the

next tab-page (s), the responding data table’s information will be uploaded into the

dataGrid control and shown as text into the corresponding text fields, located on the

same form. The available record (if such one exists) is uploaded into the data grid

control and shown up on the screen - Figure 2.12:

Figure 2.12 A certain data record uploaded into the data grid
All data included into the data grid control above is uploaded into editable text fields

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as well - Appendix B: Figure 11. We can walk through all the tab-pages, taking a

preview upon all records of a person - Appendix B: Figure 12.

VI. RUNNING RESULT

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SUMMARY

In this report, an information system’s development has been presented. It was

emphasized on the basic steps, consequently taken during the project’s development

course as a particular attention was turned to the basic operative functions performed

upon the data into the database. The report’s content comprises the whole task

solution, starting from the programming environments have been selected, going

through the database, the applications analyze and construction, and finishing with

the code-implementation and test-samples, shown separately in Appendix chapters.

As a future work, some additional stuff could be implemented and integrated into the

application code making it much more reliable and flexible; especially what concerns

a pay-roll module, for instance. Apparently, the role of such systems is basic and

essential within each company that wants to keep a really good control and record

concerning its personnel data, functionality and performance on all levels in its

structure. Every organization, in nowadays, has the necessity of managing its staff on

a really good level as the staff has definitely the greatest merit of building up a

company as such as it is. The well managed staff means giving the appropriate

financial award-ness and all kind of benefits as such as they have been deserved.

That’s why the development of such systems is not just a programming business – a

lot of people are ordinarily involved in such projects and one of the basic

requirements is the reliability of the system, especially what concerns the storage of

data and all of the operations that will be performed upon it.

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Mark：

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