Question

I am developing a school management system and I am struggling whether I should develop for [desktop app + wcf] or web app(website). Which one is going to be the best for the given scenario?

The main goals for the “Integrated Web-Based School Management and Quality Audits Software Project for Secondary Schools are outlined below. In addition, specific objectives within each of the goals have been provided.

• Goal 1: To facilitate automated data entries in secondary schools

  • Objective 1:1- To provide internet facilities and computer systems for secondary schools to further facilitate entries of student information into an integrated school management system.

  • Objective 1:2- To provide teachers with the possibility to enter continuous assessment data into the computer systems for each student.

  • Objective 1:3- To provide teachers with the possibility to enter end of term results for each student.

  • Objective 1:4:- To provide teachers with the possibility to enter students’ conduct at end of term for each student

  • Objective 1:5:- To provide the administration office with the possibility to register new students into the system

  • Objective 1:6:- To provide finance/fees office with the possibility to enter fees information for each student

  • Objective 1:7:- To provide parents with the possibility to access their children’s information online and provide feedback when needed or requested to do so

• Goal 2:- To generate a portfolio of student information in respect of each student. A unique student identification will be used to access each student’s portfolio. The following are the main components of the portfolio.

  • Objective 2:1:- One of the components of the students’ portfolio page will be the Result Slip of the immediate last examination term. This will display all subjects taken by the student, continuous assessment results, examination results, grades and positions obtained in each subject, overall student position, student’s conduct and recommendation information. This report will automatically be gathered from the various inputs made from the individual teachers and staff

  • Objective 2:2:- Up to date historical record of Fees Information. This is vital information that will be available on each student portal. All fees due and all payments made that are entered by the fees/finance staff will be gathered by this component of the portfolio. Parents will be able to see this as well and provide feedback on any observed discrepancies.

  • Objective 2:3:- Attendance and Conduct report. This component of the portfolio is intended to give an account of the student’s attendance records and information on conduct as provided by the school authorities. If the information demands parent’s attention and feedback, this will be indicated here, and parents will be able to enter relevant feedback as requested.

  • Objective 2:4:- Completed and Pending Assignments Module. This component of the student’s portfolio will list all assignments completed by the student in the current term and will list uncompleted ones as well.

• Goal 3:- To generate aggregated data for the management of the school. This will enable the school management have a high-level overview of student population, performance statistics for all the modules in the various classes, aggregated data on fees paid and fees pending, etc. There will hyperlinks or select options from which authorized staff will click or select from, in order to reach the requested aggregated data. Main components of the management page are listed below,

  • Objective 3:1:- One of the components of the staff portfolio page will be the Population Statistics. This will indicate total number of students, which is expandable to also list number of males and number of females. This can further be expanded to list female and male students in the various classes

  • Objective 3:2:- Performance Overview is another component of the staff portfolio. This will provide a high level overview of students’ performance. Per each class and for each subject, this module will list the number of Grade A students, Grade B students and so on and so forth. This links can be further expanded to view the number of males and females who obtained the various grades in the various classes. This module will also compare grades obtained in one subject with another to give an overview of modules that students do very well with those that they do not, to help management take quick action to rectify any anomalies

  • Objective 3:3:- Fees Overview is another component of the staff portfolio. This will provide fees information in the form of total fees paid within a specific period (Selectable from term, year, previous year(s), all years until current term, etc.). This information can be further expanded to show fees owed per class, payments overdue and allow the fees office to generate generic reminder messages in the form of email or text messages to parents of students who are overdue.

Answer 1

Reading through those requirements, it sounds like this is more than one application.

Undoubtedly you need some sort of web application (probably ASP.NET in some form?) to allow the parents of students to asses their children’s records.

However for security purposes this same application should probably not be used for teachers and administrative staff to edit these records. Those functions should be on a protected LAN, and require more application security for viewing or editing any potentially sensitive data (especially financial records).

I don’t see where WCF would fit into this, unless you need to provide some web service support to some other system? Or perhaps proving some “application server” on a protected LAN that can use WCF to serve data to 2 separate applications for outside / public access (from separate web servers in a DMZ) and one for internal users.

There isn’t really 1 answer to this question.