DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN ONLINE BARCODE ATTENDANCE SYSTEM

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.0 Introduction

This chapter reviews literature relevant to the topic understudy to expose the researcher to what has been done in this area. To do this effectively, the following sub-headings were covered: Theoretical background and review of the related literature.

2.1 Theoretical Background

In this project the researcher is making use of several concepts and technologies which will be talking about. The major technologies used in this project are web technologies HTML (Hyper Text Make-up Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheet), JAVASCRIPT, PHP (Personal Home Page) and relational database technologies. This site developed is a collection of web documents. These web documents are presented to the user through an application program known as a browser e.g. Internet Explorer Edge, Firefox, Chrome.

HTML and CSS

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language and CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets are the crucial technologies for creating web pages. HTML supplies the structure of the page, and CSS the layout, for diversity of devices. Together with scripting and graphics, HTML and CSS are the fundamental of building Web Applications and Web pages. HTML provides designers and developers the following facilities, to design forms for directing transactions with remote services, for use in making reservation, searching for information, ordering products, and others retrieving online information through hypertext links. to include video and sound clips, spread sheets, and other applications straight in their documents, designer can publish online documents with text, headings, tables, photos and others.

CSS describes the Web pages’ presentation, involving layout, colors, and fonts. It enables the designer to adjust the presentation to various types of devices, like a

small screen, large screens, or printers. CSS is separate from HTML, and their separation makes it easy to preserve and maintain sites, share style sheets across pages, and accommodate pages to various environments.

Figure 2.1 HTML Codes.

Figure 2.2 CSS Codes.

Bootstrap

Frameworks 2.5.1 Bootstrap is front-end framework and collection of tools and mechanisms for building web applications. It consists of HTML and CSS based design templates for navigations, forms, buttons, typography, and other interface elements, and also JavaScript extensions.

PhpMyAdmin

It is an open source tool and also, it is free written in PHP, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript planned to manage the administration of MySQL by using of a web. It is able to perform various missions like creating, modifying databases, tables, fields, executing SQL statements or managing and supervise users.

Following is some features of the phpMyAdmin;

• It is web interface.
• It administrates multiple servers.
• It is able to create PDF graphics of the database layout.
• Importing data from SQL and CSV.
• Export data to different formats such as SQL, PDF, CSV, XML and others.
• It works with various Operating Systems and others.

The Sublime Text 3 Editor

Sublime Text is a cross platform source code editor written in C++ and python. It originally supports plenty of programming and markup languages, and its functionality can be increased via users with plugins.

Sublime Text 3 has two main features that are symbol pane management and symbol indexing. Through pane management users are to move between panes by hotkeys and symbol indexing.

Figure 2.3 Sublime Text Editor.

MySQL

SQL stands for Structured Query Language. MySQL is an open source Relational Database Management System (RDBMS); it is a popular database for use in web applications, and is a central part of the greatly used LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) open-source web application software stack. MySQL is used by many applications like, WordPress, Joomla, TYPO3, Drupal, MyBB, phpBB, MODX and other software. Numerous large scale websites including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are also using MySQL. On all platforms excluding Windows, MySQL sends with no GUI (Graphical User Interface) to administer MySQL databases or managing the data held within the databases. Users may install MySQL Workbench by downloading separately or simply may use the command line tools. Numbers of third party GUI tools are also available. Swedish company has created MySQL which is written in C and C++. The first version of MySQL revealed on 23 may 1995. It has various versions. The general accessibility of MySQL 5.7 was broadcast in Oct 2015, and the version which is used in my project is 5.6.17.

Figure 2.4 MySQL Database.

PHP

PHP also known as Personal Home Page which is used to design a dynamic website example: Facebook. PHP isn’t a code you see affecting the layout of the page, it’s a code that handles the connection to the database and so on.

Figure 2.5 PHP codes.

Student ID Card

The use of ID card is mainly to verify the identity of the person who is holding it. Universities issue ID card to students so they can use it as a proof to prove that he/she is a student of the university. Normally, ID card only contains the essential information such as ID number, name of the person and other identity information.

Figure 2.6 shows a student ID card with QRcode.

Student ID card contains barcode of student Registration number. The barcode is a 1D barcode, with format CODE 128, and the type of information set is a simple text. To identify the barcode format and type of information set, users can use existing scanner application to identify the barcode format and its encoded information.

Barcode

A barcode is a pattern that consists of grouped dark bars and white spaces. Users encode data characters to generate barcode thus every barcode represent different data. It is a machine-readable pattern by using bar code scanner to decode it. In the current world, barcode is used to identify ID number of item such as retail sales product, books and others.

Based on community of ID Automation Incorporation (2012), the design of barcode is to eliminate the manual data entry error rate. In the case of manually enters data by keyboard, typo error always exists. By using barcode, error such as inaccurate or incorrect data can be reduced, at the same time shortens the working procedural. There are many types of barcodes use, the most common used barcode is Linear (1D) Barcodes and Matrix (2D) Barcodes. There are also 3D Barcodes developed.

The main difference between Linear barcodes and Matrix barcodes is the Linear barcodes hold less than 85 characters, and Matrix barcodes can hold hundreds of characters.

2.2 Review of Related Literature

Attendance is the act or fact of attending (being present at) school. Also, attendance is used to define the number of persons present on a particular day at school. An attendance policy provides the guidelines and expectations for students’ attendance at school as defined, written, disseminated, and implemented by the school. Depending on the school, attendance may be entered by the class representative or by the teachers, or possibly, both. Attendance can be recorded in many ways such as using web based, RFID, biometrics and bar code scanner. Since most of the application developed nowadays requires the world wide accessibility, web based system is the most common attendance system that available. Some institutions use RFID to record the attendance of their student and the record sent to online server for an online accessibility [1]. Apart from that, there is plenty of educational institutions used RFID technology to record their student attendance. Easy connection of data into internet make RFID technology most common technology used in recording student attendance [2], [3]. However, RFID technologies incur high cost and need experience people to handle the system. Apart from that, biometrics technology is another tremendous use of technology in the domain of attendance reporting and tracking. Most of the biometrics technology used thumb print as sign of system entry [4]. This allows a fair and reliable attendance to be recorded since there is no platform for any attendance cheating [5]. Biometric utilize the fingerprint apart from thumb print method. Fingerprint peripheral used to record the attendance and sent the data into system using wireless technology [6]. Image recording is another recent method used in recording attendance. Movement recorded in internal surveillance camera used as sign of attendance entry in one of the workplace in China [7]. These advanced technologies require high costing and well trained system developer. Use of bar code scanner is popular among educational institution which are not financially supported and it is not required any well trained people to install and fix [8]. Bar code scanner used as medium to record the attendance for one of the secondary school in Malaysia since their student card using bar code.

The impact of Parent involvement

Research [8] shows parent involvement has a positive impact on school attendance. In addition, Joyce Epstein and Steven Sheldon from Johns Hopkins University [9] found that certain parent engagement practices contribute to improving daily attendance and decreasing chronic absence. Schools have better attendance when they:

• Orient parents on school policies and expectations for student attendance and on-time arrival.
• Provide parents with a school contact person.
• Communicate often (as needed) to provide all families with information on attendance.
• Reward students for excellent attendance. (This is not the same as perfect attendance. Attendance Works suggests rewarding students for improved attendance as well.)
• Make home visits.
• Refer chronically absent students to a school counselor or a truant officer who intervenes in firm, but positive, ways.

2.3 Summary

The study is focused on the attendance monitoring of the students in the school through the design and development of a system providing a means of information on the attendance of the students on the school through SMS reminder notification.