A Mobile Application to Access Remote Database using Web Services
ABSTRACT:

 We have seen over the years that the process of manual attendance has been carried outacross almost all educational institutions. The process is not only time consuming but also sometimes inefficient resulting in the false marking of attendance. Today, we need not maintain pen and paper based attendance registers. Following this thought, we have proposed an attendance monitoring system based on the concept of web services which is implementedas an Android mobile application that communicates with the database residing on a remote server. The mobile application would require connecting to the database using either General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) or WiFi technology. This paper discusses the proposed system, overview of the design, the various modules of the system and its implementation.

EXISTING SYSTEM:

In existing system have seen over the years that the process of manual attendance has been carried out across almost all educational institutions. The process is not only time consuming but also sometimes inefficient resulting in the false marking of attendance. Today, we need not maintain pen and paper based attendance registers.

PROPOSED SYSTEM:

Our system primarily focuses on building an efficient and user friendly Android mobile application for an Attendance Monitoring. The application will be installed on the user’s (in this case teacher’s) smart phone. It intends to provide an interface to the teacher who will require minimal details to input for marking of attendance of a particular class of students.
Apart from that, the application would support strong user authentication and quick transmission of data via the web service.
Another noticeable feature of the entire application would be that no data would be stored on the user device in any form whatsoever. The application thus build would also help to avoid the chance of a proxy as the application would be handled by the teacher only.
MODULES:
1. User authentication
2. Calling of Web Service
3. Marking Attendance
4. Display information of student
MODULES:
Our proposed system is divided into four distinct modules described as follows:
1. User authentication: Initially, when the teacher runs the application for the first time, a login screen will be displayed that will prompt the teacher to enter the username and password required for authentication. The teacher will be provided with a unique username which would be a combination of alphanumeric characters. Only when the teacher enters the correct username and password, a “success” message will be displayed and the teacher will get authenticated and directed to the next screen.

2. Calling of Web Service: In this module, the teacher will need to select details such as the name of the subject for which the lecture is being taken, time of lecture and the particular semester for which the lecture is conducted. After doing so, the teacher needs to call the web service by clicking a button provided on the screen. The web service thus invoked would return the list of names of all the students belonging to a particular semester and branch as per the input provided.

3. Marking Attendance: After the list of students has been displayed the teacher needs to begin the process of marking the attendance of students. For this purpose our application would be providing checkboxes against each student’s name that will allow the teacher to mark the student either present or absent. Accordingly, the details of the student will be sent to the remote database and the attendance will be marked for that particular day.

4. Display information of student: Once the attendance has been marked successfully, the teacher can anytime check the attendance record of a particular student by entering the unique roll number provided to every student. The information thus displayed would include the student’s attendance percentage, number of lectures a student has attended for a particular subject, number of lectures missed, as well as the overall attendance.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
HARDWARE REQUIREMENTS:

Ø System                          :         Pentium IV 2.4 GHz.
Ø Hard Disk                     :         40 GB.
Ø Floppy Drive                 :         1.44 Mb.
Ø Monitor                          :         15 VGA Colour.
Ø Mouse                            :         Logitech.
Ø Ram                               :         512 Mb.
Ø MOBILE                        :         ANDROID

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS:

Ø Operating system           :         ANDROID.
Ø Coding Language :         Java 1.6
Ø Tool Kit               :         Android 2.2
Ø IDE                      :         Eclipse

CONCLUSION:
In this paper, an Android based mobile application for Attendance Monitoring is presented. The application offers reliability, time savings and easy control. It can be used as a base for creating similar applications for tracking attendance in offices or any workplace. It can be also integrated in healthcare sector to keep track of nurse to patient visits by streamlining the time entry, time approval and management processes.