Timetable planning and scheduling system

• Main Author: Chew, Yi Zhuang.
• Other Authors: Vun Chan Hua, Nicholas
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Information systems::Information interfaces and presentation
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/52564
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

This report presents the design, implementation and testing of a new server-client database driven web-based Timetable Planning and Scheduling System (TPS) to replace the existing version used by staff to plan and schedule lessons for the undergraduate programmes offered by the School of Computer Engineering (SCE). The existing TPS running on a Windows XP platform was developed in the early 2000s and is based on Rails 1.2.3, technology that has been obsoleted since 2007. As support has been dropped for Rails 1.2.3, development and maintenance of the existing TPS has become increasingly difficult. Previous students that were tasked to maintain and enhance the existing TPS had concluded that an upgrade of the system is infeasible and had suggested for it to be totally redeveloped. Therefore, the objective of this project is to design and implement from scratch a new TPS that provides similar functionalities available on the existing TPS but based on the latest web technologies and to deploy it on a more stable Linux platform. Before the implementation of the system, a functionality analysis of the existing system and other available open-source solutions was conducted. In addition, different web technologies available to best achieve these functions were explored and evaluated. Following this, the system was designed and implemented. The functions were tied together with a Bootstrap layout and deployed on a Virtual Machine. The newly implemented TPS achieves most of the functionalities of the existing system but is now based on the latest Rails version, Rails 3.2.9 and is running on a Linux platform deployed on the SCE Virtualisation Management Server. Comparing to the existing TPS, the new TPS provides many improvements in terms of usability and robustness as well as stability due to the Linux platform. Nevertheless, it is expected that more refinements could be added to the system to further improve its usability after receiving feedbacks from the users of the new TPS.