Browsing by Author "Uduwela, W.C."

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A DATABASE MODEL TO AUTOMATE THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT.
(2016) Uduwela, W.C.
This research proposes a mechanism to generate database, which is an essentialcomponent of any Information System (IS), automatically from the given set ofbusiness forms. This eliminates all the technical complexities of database design anddevelopment from end users. Further, it will enable developing ISs for Small andMedium Enterprises (SMEs) by themselves. Though there are software productsavailable which can automate the IS development process, all of them request thetechnical details of database model which depends on the domain / application as aninput. Relational database model is the most commonly used database model, but itsdesign and development process is difficult for non-technical users.Thus, this research proposes a new data model called Set Based Data Model(SBDM), which is a generic modcl for any domain, and it is free from intennediatetechnical steps. The theoretical foundation of this model is the relationship betweenfields/attributes of fonns used in IS and the values/data of the business domain usedin the business transactions. Hence, the data requirement of the model is alreadyavailable in forms.There are two types of data storages in this model: one to keep the businessknowledge (data layer) and the other to keep the transaction details (reference layer).These data storages consist with tables and keys as in the relational database model.Separate tables are generated for each distinct field/attributes (excluding the derivedfields/attributes) in all forms to maintain the data layer while separate tables aregenerated for each form with all attributes to maintain the reference layer. The tablesin the data layer maintain a key value for each record while the tables in thereference layer refer the relevant key values at the data layer to maintain records ofeaeh transaction. Tables in these two layers can be implemented using existingrelational database management systems.
End-user Enable Database Design and Development Automation
(Faculty of Computing and Technology, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Uduwela, W.C.; Wijayarathna, G.
Information System (IS) is a combination of software, hardware, and network components working together to collect, process, create, and distribute data to do the business operations. It consists with “update forms” to collect data, “reports” to distribute data, and “databases” to store data. IS plays a major role in many businesses, because it improves the business competitiveness. Although SMEs are interested to adopt IS, they are often suffered by other factors: time, underline cost, and availability of ICT experts. Hence, the ideal solution for them is to automate the process of IS design and development without ICT expertise for an affordable cost. The software tools are available on the Web to generate the “update forms” and “reports” automatically for a given database model. However, there is no approach to generate the databases of IS automatically. Relational database model (RDBM) is the most commonly used database model in IS due to its advantages than the other data models. The reason of the advantages of the model is its design, but it is not a natural way of representing data. The model is a collection of data that is organized into multiple tables/relations linked to one another using key fields. These links represent the associations between relations. Typically, tables/relations represent entities in the domain. A table/relation has column/s and rows where column/s represent the attributes of the entity and rows represent the records (data). Each row in a table should have a key to identify that row uniquely. Designers should have to identify these elements from the given data requirements in the process of the RDBM design, which is difficult for non-technical people. The process of design of RDBM has few steps: collect the set of data requirements, develop the conceptual model, develop the logical model, and convert it to the physical model. Though there are approaches to automate some steps of the process of design and development of RDBM, they also request the technical support. Thus, it is required to develop a mechanism to automate the database design and development process by overcoming the difficulties in the automation approaches of RDBM, so that non-technical end-users will be able to develop their databases by themselves. Hence, a comprehensive literature survey was conducted to analyze the feasibilities and difficulties of the automation of the process of RDBM design and development. Uduwela, W. et al., the author says that the “form” is the best way to collect data requirements of the database model for its automation, because form is in semi structured way than the natural language (the most common way to present the data requirements is natural language) and it is very closer to the underline database. Approaches were available to automate the development of the conceptual model based on the given data requirements. This is the most critical step in the RDBM design process, because it needs to identify the elements of the model (entities, attributes of them, relationship among the entities, keys and the cardinalities). Form based approaches were analyzed using the data available in the literature to recognize the places where the user intervention is needed. The analysis says that all approaches need user support and it is needed to make the corrections of the outcome, because the elements are not consistent among business domains; it differs from domain to domain and with the same domain also. Further, they demand user support to make the initial input according to the data requirements (set of forms) to identify the elements of the conceptual model. The next step of the process is developing the logical model based on the conceptual model. The outcome of the logical model should be a normalized database to eliminate the data insertion, updating and deletion anomalies by reducing its data redundancies. Data redundancies often caused by Functional Dependencies (FD) that are a set of constraints between two sets of attributes in a relation. The database can be normalized by removing undesirable FDs (remove partial dependencies and transitive dependencies). We could not identify any approach that generates normalize database diagram automatically from the data requirements directly. Existing approaches request the FDs to generate the normalized RDBM. Designers’ high perception power and skills are needed to identify the correct FDs, because it also depends on the domain which is a problem for the automation. FDs can be found by doing data mining, but it also generates an incorrect set of FDs if there are insufficient data combinations. Developing the physical model from the logical model is straightforward and relational database management systems help to automate it. According to the analysis, it can be concluded that the existing approaches on conceptual model development cannot develop accurate models as they has to develop distinct models for each problem. Normalization approaches also cannot be automated as FDs also vary among business domains and with the same domain also. These concludes that there should a database model that can be designed and developed by end-users without any expert knowledge. The proposed model should not be either domain specific or problem specific. It would be better if the approach could convert the data requirements to the database model directly without intermediate steps like in the DBM design process. Further, it would be better the proposed model could be run on the existing database management systems too.
Quality Assurance Framework for b2c E-Commerce Web Sites
(University of Kelaniya, 2007) Wickramarachchi, R.; Uduwela, W.C.
A Web site is one of the main information sources in digitally enabled world, and activities of different Web sites vary from each other depending on the purpose of the site. £-commerce is one of the core domains among those purposes. A Web site could improve its activities by speedy communication, offering a more convenient services to users, cost reduction etc. One of the main marketing channels to reach end customers is B2C (Business to Customer) e-commerce where a business transacts with an individual consumer online. Currently a large number of Web sites provide B2C e-commerce services. However, many B2C e-commerce Web sites have a short lifespan due to number of reasons including issues relating to quality of Web sites. According to past research it is observed that there is a positive relationship between the online shopping behavior of a customer and quality of a Web site. This is mainly due to positive customer experience depends mainly on the quality of Web sites. As a result of poor quality Web sites companies may face a fewer number of visitor thus reducing sales. Therefore it could be concluded that the quality of B2C e-commerce Web sites is vital for customers as well as for companies. The main objective of this research is to identify factors that influence the quality of a B2C e-commerce Web site and develop a framework. The framework provides a set of guidelines in order to ensure that a Web site achieves a specified quality level. According to ISO standards there are three views of the quality of Web sites; namely, managers' view, users' view and developers' view. Users are interested in the quality in use which is mainly an external factor including sustainability, ability to install, functionality, adaptability, ease of use, ability to learn, interpretability, reliability, safety, security, correctness and efficiency. However, developers and managers are more interested in internal quality characteristics such as maintainability, testability, flexibility, reusability and portability of a Web site. Therefore, quality of a Web site could be evaluated from both view points of users and managers/developers. However, seeing a Web site from users' eyes is paramount as users are the ultimate judges of a Web site quality. Hence, this research focuses on the external quality of a Web site. A comprehensive literature survey was carried out in order to identify the factors affect the quality of e-commerce sites. The literature survey revealed that information content, ease of use, usefulness, download delay, navigation/ organization, interactivity, responsiveness, reliability, security, design! visual appearance are as main quality factors. This is an ongoing research at the Department of Industrial management, University of Kelaniya. It is expected to validate the developed framework with success and failure stories of B2C e-commerce Web sites and users' feedback. The proposed framework can be applied to other types of Web sites such as Business to Business (B2B), information providers etc. with slight modifications.