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The Co-op Database Project
Who It's For
At Northeastern University cooperative education is an integral part of
the education experience. There is a continuous need to supervise
hundreds of students searching through thousands of jobs each and
every school quarter. We present a modern computerized Web-based
Cooperative Education Database System that connects employers,
students and faculty. Employers post and maintain their up to date job
offerings. Students search for these jobs and maintain their own
personal job selections and information. All of this interaction is
supervised and coordinated by the Co-op Faculty.
What's Included
Rather than creating a completed product, our goal was to generate a
working model of the system that could be used as a prototype for a
future full scale system. The project included a detailed requirement
analysis and specifications for the system, a database schema design
and simulations of possible usage scenarios of the data flow, and the
implementation of the model database and its main graphical user
interface with Microsoft Access. A partial web interface for students
was also implemented with Active Server Pages on IIS web server.
How We Did It
The work was done on a small-scale Co-op database in the College of
Computer Science. A working model of the system was created as part
of a practical training directed study course.
What We Learned
Since this project was begun, Northeastern University has decided to
implement a Web-based commercial Co-op database product which
includes many feature similar to those in this project.
Who We Are
Ran Bester
Undergraduate Student
College of Computer Science
Northeastern University
[email protected]
Mark Erickson
Co-op/Advising Coordinator
Dept. of Cooperative Education
College of Computer Science
Northeastern University
[email protected]
David H. Lorenz
Assistant Professor
College of Computer Science
Northeastern University
[email protected]
Stage 1: Analysis
The first stage of the project was requirement analysis. Before the
database schema was designed, before the interface was laid out, and
before any code was written, the requirements had to be thoroughly
defined and understood.
Since the same database serves different user groups with different
expectations and needs, the requirements report was broken into
three main sections with the details of the specifications of each of the
user groups.
The User Groups
There are three main user groups for the CO-OP dB system:
• Faculty:
3 Co-op faculty members, and 1-2 work-study students.
• Students: 600 active CCS undergraduate and graduate students.
• Employers:1200 employers (530 active) mostly from
Massachusetts, but also from other states in the U.S.
The System’s Users
Students
Faculty
Staff
CO-OP dB
Employers
Implemented in version 1.0
Not Implemented in version 1.0
The same database serves all the users of the system, but
each group has a separate interface to interact with it.
Stage 2: Design
The second stage of the project was to design a system that would
satisfy the specifications. A well thought database schema was
created. The database was designed to answer both present and
future expectations from the system.
Basically there are three main entities in the database:
• Student: Student relevant info.
• Employer: Info. about companies, their contacts and locations.
• Job:
Job info.
All the rest of the data revolves around these three entities and the
various relationships between them.
The Database Schema
For the purpose of creating the working model Microsoft
Access was sufficient. Access can be relatively easily
upgraded to a higher level relational database
management system when implementing a final production
level system.
Stage 3: Implementation
Sample Screens From the Co-op Faculty Interface
The final stage of the project was the actual implementation which
included creating the graphical user interface, writing code, testing it
and debugging it. The Co-op faculty interface was fully implemented
with Microsoft Access, and the student’s Web interface was
implemented with Microsoft Active Server Pages on Internet
Information Services web server.
Sample Screens From the Students Web Interface