STUDENT ATTENDANCE

1
STUDENT ATTENDANCE RESULT REPORTING SYSTEM
USING PERL

• Advanced Issues In Programming
• Date Created 18 October 2005

2
Table of Contents

• Part 1 Project Overview
• Part 2 Language Overview
• Part 3 Language Description
• Part 4 Project Evaluation

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Project Overview
Part 1

• This section presents
• The objectives of this project
• An introduction to the system
• The System functionalities
• The programming environment
• The reason why PERL is chosen

4
Project Objectives

• PERL is known as an efficient tool for
  text-processing and reporting, the objectives of
  this project are

• To evaluate these two well-known features of
  PERL
• To assess other PERL language design and features
  (e.g. object-oriented, security) as compare to
  other programming languages, such as C, JAVA,
  ASP, VB etc.

5
System Introduction

• The Student Attendance and Result Reporting
  application is designed for this project to
  evaluate the PERL language.
• The system is developed as an add-on reporting
  tool to the standard student and course
  management system, for analysis and data mining
  purposes.
• The system emphases on the reporting features of
  PERL, e.g. generating summary reports,
  comparative charts.
• Additionally, the system also provides upload
  functions to interface with and display master
  data (e.g. course details, student details)

6
System Functionalities

• The Student Attendance and Result Reporting
  system enables the lecturers to

• Manage student attendance timesheet and results
• Manage student assignment submissions and exam
  results
• Generate tabular reports (e.g. Result list)
• Generate graphical reports (line, pie, bar charts
  etc) of student attendance and results for
  analysis purpose.

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System Screenshots
Course Search List
Course Attendance Comparison Report
8
Programming Environment

• The Student Attendance and Result Reporting
  system is developed using the Open Source - LAMP
  - Linux / Apache / MySQL / (PERL/ PHP / Python)
  platform

• Apache as the web server
• MySQL as the database
• PERL, PHP, HTML as the scripting languages
• Windows XP as the operating systems

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Why PERL

• PERL is chosen as the development language for
  this project for a number of reasons cited in
  most of the PERL articles

• PERL is free
• PERL is growing and evolving
• PERL is available for almost every hardware
  platform
• PERL scripts can be created with any text editor
• PERL is an interpreted language
• PERL is powerful and fast
• PERL is easy to learn
• PERL supports various databases

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Language Overview
Part 2

• This section briefs
• History of PERL
• Programming Paradigm of PERL
• Application Areas of PERL
• Language Features of PERL
• Compilation / Interpretation / Execution Model

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History of PERL

• PERL is an acronym for "Practical Extraction and
  Report Language"
• PERL was developed by Larry Wall in 1987, in
  response to a management needs for a
  configuration management system.
• PERL was originally developed as a data reduction
  language (i.e. a language that is capable of
  consuming large quantities of data efficiently),
  and operated as a Shell scripts on Unix
  platforms.
• Since then, releases have generally come out
  about once a year. Version 5.8.6 is the latest
  release

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Programming Paradigm of PERL

• Perl has features that support a variety of
  programming paradigms, such as procedural,
  functional, and object-oriented

• Procedural ? PERL syntax patterned after C
  variables, expressions, assignment statements,
  brace-delimited code blocks, control structures,
  and subroutines are derived from C.
• Functional ? PERL can also be used in a
  functional style, as it supports higher-orders
  functions and abstractions.
• Object-oriented ?PERL added some of the OO
  supports to the language, e.g. creation of
  classes, inheritance, encapsulation and
  polymorphism/Dynamic Binding.

13
Application Areas of PERL

• PERL is widely used in finance and
  bioinformatics, where it is valued for rapid
  application development, ability to handle large
  data sets, and the availability of many standard
  and 3rd-party modules
• Large projects written in PERL include
• The Country Answer Seizure System used in MCI
  WorldCom Asia Pacific headquarters to report the
  incoming and outgoing calls on a real-time basis
• Slashdot and early implementations of PHP and
  UseModWiki, the wiki software used in Wikipedia
  until 2002.

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Language Features of PERL

• PERL supports most declarations and features of
  C
• PERL also takes features from Shell programming
  with the built-in functions for common tasks,
  like sorting, and for accessing system
  facilities
• With its OO model, PERL enables class-based
  methods, inheritance, polymorphism and
  encapsulation
• PERL supports rational databases (MySQL, Oracle,
  MS SQL) and flat file data
• PERL provides automatic memory management
  dynamic typing, regular expressions, and
  interpreted execution that runs on a virtual
  machine
• PERL creates Internet aware system, allows access
  to HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, IRC Servers.

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Compilation / Interpretation / Execution Model of
PERL

• PERL is implemented as a core interpreter,
  written in C. The interpreter has an
  object-oriented architecture.
• The execution of a PERL program divides broadly
  into two phases compile-time and run-time.
• At compile time, the interpreter parses the
  program text into a syntax tree.
• At run time, it executes the program by walking
  the tree. The text is parsed only once, and the
  syntax tree is subject to optimization before it
  is executed, so the execution phase is relatively
  efficient. Compile-time optimizations on the
  syntax tree include constant folding, context
  propagation, and peephole optimization.

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Language Description
Part 3

• This section explains the data types in PERL
• Scalar Data Objects
• Composite Objects
• Structured Objects
• Abstract Data Types
• Active Objects

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Scalar Data Objects

• A scalar is a variable (i.e. number, string or
  reference)
• All variables are marked by a leading sigil,
  which identifies the data type.
• Numbers are written in the usual way strings are
  enclosed by quotes of various kinds.

attendance_benchmark 98 student_name
Joe" exam_pass_color blue' my graph
new GDGraphbars(300, 300) create a bar
chart
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Composite Objects

• PERL does not support pointers.
• A list is a composite data object in PERL
• A list is an ordered collection of scalars
• A list may be written by listing its elements,
  separated by commas, and enclosed by parentheses
  where required by operator precedence.

_at_scores (32, 45, 16, 5) _at_mark_colors
(red, blue, black) my
_at_course_attendance (Advanced Issues
Programming", Requirement Modeling",
Project Management,
Networking, 90, 98,
100, 86)
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Structured Objects

• In PERL, hashes are a good approximation of
  structured data types like structs or records.
• A hash, or associative array, is a map from
  strings to scalars It is a variable that holds a
  list.
• The strings in a hash are called keys and the
  scalars are called values.

package Student
make Student the default package
obj 'first' gt 'Joseph', 'last' gt Tang'
obj is a hash reference bless
obj
bless obj into Person print Student
name obj-gt'first' obj-gt'last'\n"
prints Student name Joseph Hall
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Abstract Objects

• Trying to create an Abstract Object in PERL is an
  error.
• PERL only allows the creation of Abstract Class
  which provides a specification to create
  user-defined data types and APIs or interface.

package course sub new my type
shift my args _at__ me-gtcourse_code
argscourse_code me-gtcourse_desc
argscourse_desc me-gtcourse_type
argscourse_type me-gtcourse_level
argscourse_level me-gtcourse_duration
argscourse_duration foreach my i
(qw(course_code course_desc course_type
course_level course_duration)) create
accessor
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Active Data Types
3 approaches to tackle routine tasks/processes in
PERL

• Backticks ()
• system() and exec()
• open() and parse

date/usr/bin/date to get current date
open PS, /usr/bin/ps ef while(ltPSgt)
do routine tasks, example create weekly
management report
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Project Evaluation
Part 4

• This section discusses
• Pros and Cons of PERL (Reporting features)
• Pros and Cons of PERL (other language features)
• Compare PERL to other languages
• Conclusion

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Pros and Cons of PERL(Reporting Features)
PERL uses GDGraph module to create charts.
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Pros and Cons of PERL(Other Language Features)
PERL derives features from C, Shell and
Object-Oriented model
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Compare PERL to other languages
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Conclusion

• In summary, PERL probably presents one of the
  best choices for software development, especially
  on the text-processing and reporting, with its
  powerful language design and features

• Efficiency PERL and the add-ons packages
  provides very useful functions for
  data-interaction and for creating report
  dynamically.
• Portability PERL is platform independent.
• Maintainability Its OO model allows reusability
  and maintainability.
• Security Built-in security is provided "out of
  the box to protect the user environment.

However, it may be a daunting challenge to
complete simple tasks with active websites,
requiring rather more learning, especially on its
installation, before starting than ASP, PHP or
JSP.