Design and development of a computerized information system for schools in Saudi Arabia

Abstract EN

This paper repons on the design and development of a menu dri- ven computerized information system for schools in Saudi Arabia.

The input/output design of the system is based on careful analysis of the activities, interviews and study of existing forms and reports used/generated by the school.

This analysis led to the design of database files to store data of the major entities of the system such as students, employees, books, equipments, student grades, ...

etc.

Suitable forms to capture data and the system output also have been designed in well structured format.

The proposed information system conceptually comprises seven modules for Internal Reports, Annual Reports.

File Maintenance.

Queries.

Re- cords/Forms, System Operations and Global Statistics.

The system is menu driven and very user friendly.

The overall program structure follows the menu structure.

For each end activity such as generating a report or a document or a file handling operation, a separate program has been developed.

The resulting system consists of 98 programs and 20 format files for screen input and dis- play.

Programs which define important characteristics of the system include the Executive Control program.

File Maintenance program.

Query program.

Report Generation programs and the common utility programs.

The system is microcomputer based developed in dBASE IV.

Arabic inter- face has been achieved through Mussa'ed Alarabi/2.

The result of the system development is a comprehensive MIS tailored for the schools in Saudi Arabia.

The main features of the resulting Computerized School Information System (CSIS) can be summarized as its comprehensiveness, relatively low hardware requirement, ease of use and the Arabic user interface.