HKALE 2012 ASL Computer Applications Paper 2 Disscussion forum system

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1 HKALE 2012 ASL Computer Applications Paper 2 Disscussion forum system Yan Chai Hospital Lim Por Yen Secondary School 7A(3) Chu Chun Kit

2 CONTENT PAGE 1. Content Page P.1 2. Schedule P.2 3. Objective P Analysis P Design P Implementation P Testing & Evaluation P Conclusion & Discussion P Documentation P.34 P. 1

3 Schedule Research Research Research Objective Objective & Analysis Objective & Analysis Analysis Objective & Analysis & Design & Implementation Design & Implementation Design & Implementation Implementation Implementation & Testing Implementation & Testing & Evaluation Testing & Evaluation Testing & Evaluation & Conclusion & Discussion Implementation & Testing & Evaluation Implementation & Testing & Evaluation & Conclusion & Discussion Conclusion & Discussion & Documentation P. 2

4 Objective: Nowadays, internet is a very convenient tool in our daily uses. People make use of the internet for different purposes. For instance, leisure, study, business, which internet applications are all over our daily life. Internet forum, one of the applications of the internet, which is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. It can contain a number of subforums, each of which may have several topics. Within a forum's topic, each new discussion started is called a thread, and can be replied to by as many people as wish to. Depending on the forum's settings, users can be anonymous or have to register with the forum and then subsequently log in in order to post messages. On most forums, users do not have to log in to read existing messages. In this project assignment, we are required to design a public discussion forum system in which a database is used to store user information and forum posts. Essential information about each post, such as the user identifier, IP address and time of the post, should be stored for security and user behaviour analysis purposes. And the system should generate statistics and carry out analysis, such as posting statistics, user statistics, online traffic analysis, and posting habits analysis. Moreover, we need to analyze the feasibility of implementing the proposed system and describe and justify the underlying database design for the system. Creating a discussion forum system, we are required to have simple database and SQL concept. Furthermore, we need to consider which type of software is suitable for us to use. The last but not the least, we should also have a good understanding about how a discussion forum is run; it can help us to create the system more easily which P. 3

5 we are familiar with the discussion forum. A database is a system intended to organize, store, and retrieve large amounts of data easily. It consists of an organized collection of data for one or more uses, typically in digital form. Digital databases are managed using database management systems, which store database contents, allowing data creation and maintenance, and search and other access. Database designer is a person responsible for the design, implementation, maintenance, and repair of an organization s database. The role includes the development and design of database strategies, monitoring and improving database performance and capacity, and planning for future expansion requirements. They may also plan, co-ordinate and implement security measures to safeguard the database. SQL is often referred to as Structured Query Language which is a database computer language designed for maintaining data in relational database management systems and originally based upon relational algebra and calculus. Its scope includes data insert, query, update and delete, schema creation and modification, and data access control. P. 4

6 Analysis: Before writing this report, I have visited several discussion forums. They use the data of the forum to generate the posting statistics, user statistics, online statistics, and posting statistics.. For instance, Little Soldier Forum, which is a discussion forum that mainly concentrated on the academic topics in Hong Kong, it places the posting statistics of the whole forum in the index of its website. As we can see the figure above, it involves the number of total thread ( ), the number of today s threads (1960). Also, it generates the posting habits analysis like the latest thread (green box in the figure), and also the latest reply (blue box in the figure). Besides, it also generate the online traffic analysis, the number of total members (219115), the number of today s new members (133), the number of visitors today (4615), and the number of online people (656). Moreover, the user statistics have been shown in the above figure, which is the new member of the forum (sinting720). Then, the forum will classify the threads into different categories, which can help the users to surf what they want more easily. As we can see from the figure below, there is two categories (green boxes in the figure), named HKDSE and HKALE. Also, P. 5

Orange box represents a thread, which also shown a title, author and the date and time he/ she did this (red box), the number of

7 in the red boxes in the figure, it shows the threads that users posted today, which are 1640 and 583 respectively. After we click in one of the categories, we can see in the figure above, there are lots of threads. Orange box represents a thread, which also shown a title, author and the date and time he/ she did this (red box), the number of reply and read (green box), and the latest reply from which members and when he/ she did it (blue box). Besides, some forum, like lsforum, it will generate the data of its members in P. 6

8 some other areas. For example, in the figure below, it shows which members are online, even the number of visitors. Also, it shows the members who have the birthday today. These are also one kind of user statistics. Furthermore, to get more information of a user, we can simply click on the user name of the member; a clear list of information will be shown as the figure besides. I will further explain these in another example. Besides lsforum, I also go to uwants, which is also a very popular discussion forum in Hong Kong. It is similar to the lsforum, but, in order to widen the P. 7

acceptability of the research, I will also show you the statistics and

Refer to the figure above, it shows that the most featured thread of the

Besides, as we can see in the figure below, it also have the statistics

9 acceptability of the research, I will also show you the statistics and analysis used in uwants. Refer to the figure above, it shows that the most featured thread of the whole forum, and the categories. Besides, as we can see in the figure below, it also have the statistics about the total number of members at that time (52115), the highest record of online members at the same time ( on 6 th January, 2010), total number of threads ( ), etc. P. 8

Then, for the third forum, I have found a mainland discussion forum. The website is http://help.cool5site.biz/.

In the figure above, it generates the most famous thread today, the members who post the most thread today, and

10 Then, for the third forum, I have found a mainland discussion forum. The website is In fact, this forum not only consists of the statistics and analysis in above forums, but also something else. In the figure above, it generates the most famous thread today, the members who post the most thread today, and the overall one, etc. Besides, in the figure above, it stated that the latest topic of different categories. The figure P. 9

He is accessed to the forum, and his latest action on this forum is that he is watching the index page of the forum at 11:46pm.

11 above is showing the similar things of other forums. But, it has a bar chart showing the members who posted the most numbers of threads. After we click in the list of online users, we can see a page like the figure below. We can see a member called angeli as an example. He is accessed to the forum, and his latest action on this forum is that he is watching the index page of the forum at 11:46pm. Even more, the forum can check the IP address of the users to find out where he accesses to the forum. In the figure, it shows that angeli accesses the forum in Wuhan. After we click on the name of angeli, we can see his profile In fact; this is nearly the same as the other forums. After we click on the bottom of statistics, we can see the numbers of thread that posted by this user and the reply numbers of the user. Moreover, we can find the threads or replies according to the user name. P. 10

12 In order to design a public discussion forum system, we need to choose the most suitable database management software (DMS) first. There is a lot of database management software in the market, for example, Oracle Database, MySQL, Microsoft Access, Microsoft Visual FoxPro, to name but a few. In order to find the most suitable one for our design, we will analyze the above four software, so as to find out the advantages and disadvantages of them. Microsoft Access is more user-friendly, as it is using the graphical user interface, instead of command line interface. The normal users can easily familiar themselves with the software. However, it can only be run under Microsoft platform. And it will be slow in processing a large amount of data in the database. P. 11

Visual FoxPro just supports SQL for the processing of the data, and Microsoft has announced that they are not going to release another version of this product.

MySQL is open source database software. It is generally used in a smaller scale of business.

But, it cannot support the relational database function, like sub-queries, which we can only use joint function.

13 Visual FoxPro just supports SQL for the processing of the data, and Microsoft has announced that they are not going to release another version of this product. Since this action will not affect our current designing, however, in the long-term view, it is not good to act as a sample of designing a discussion forum system. MySQL is open source database software. It is generally used in a smaller scale of business. In fact, it is quite suitable because it allows users to have database management software at a lower cost than others. But, it cannot support the relational database function, like sub-queries, which we can only use joint function. And it is not using the graphical user interface, which makes normal users difficult use. Oracle has been the industry leader in database management software for a long time. It is also multiplatform. It, however, is not suitable for us, mainly because most customers of oracle are multi-national companies, which require a more professional DMS. Since we do not need to use this kind of powerful software in our design, we can save the time of learning the method of using it. Also, P. 12

14 the services provided by Microsoft are better than Oracle, as it has rich online materials and complete information platform, most of the answer of the problems can be found in its website, users can save the time costs of finding the answers. Among the software above, I will choose to use Microsoft Access. It is because not all people have learnt how to use the database management software and SQL. Also, with Access, users can use bottoms instead of typing commands, the problem of having mistakes in the SQL can be solved by using the design view instead of the SQL view and it can help to report the result of processing, and using Macro for the developing of database more effective next times. P. 13

15 Design: The first thing we have to do is to design the structure of the database system. We can use an E-R diagram (Entity Relationship Diagram) to show the structure clearly. Here is the E-R diagram for the discussion forum: The relations between entities are clearly showed. An entity is a representation of any composite information of a real object or an abstract object. They are the main objects in the relationship. The ERD notation for entities is a rectangle. In the above E-R diagram, user and news are the main objects, which are the entities. Attributes define the properties of an entity so as to name an instance of an entity, describe the instance, and make reference to another instance. The ERD notation for attributes is an oval. If an attribute is the key or a component of the primary key of an entity, the attribute name will be underlined, which stated that it is unique and cannot be null. In the above ERD, there is lots of attributes for user and news. For user, its attributes contain user-id, start date, password, online, e-ail, etc, which user-id is the P. 14

16 primary key of the entity, user. Then, for the entity, news, its attributes consist of ID of the thread, the categories that the thread is located, etc, which ID here is the key attribute of news. Relationships are links connecting to entities that the relationships of the entities. There may be more than one relationship between two or more entities. The ERD notation for relationship is a diamond with the name of the relationship as the label of the shape. Refer to the ERD; there is three relationships between the two entities. User can reply, post or read the news. Cardinality defines the actual number of entities that must be included in a relationship. Cardinality information can be divided into two types minimum cardinality and maximum cardinality. Data modeling concerns whether or not the minimum cardinality is zero and whether or not the maximum cardinality is greater than one (1), i.e., one or many (n or m), as such information will affect how a data model is translated into a data schema i.e., database design. O means the existence of the entity in the relationship is optional. 1 means that the existence of the entity in a relationship must have at least one. M means more than one existence between entities. In the ERD above, a user can reply more than one news, or reply none of them. One news can also replied by more than one user, or no one to reply. This is many-to-many (m:n) relationship. For the posting, a user can post more than one news, or posts zero news. However, one news must be posted by one user at maximum and minimum. Thus, there is a one-to-many (1:m) relationship. Then, for the reading, it is similar to the replying. A user can read more than one news, or he can read nothing. One news can be read by more than one user, or no one to read it. There is also a many-to-many (m:n) relationship. P. 15

17 Apart from the E-R diagram, we also need to have the schema of the E-R diagram because ERD is just a result of data analysis, but it cannot form a table structure. There is three basic rules to converse the ERD to schema. For a 1:1 cardinality relationship, all the attributes of the related entities are grouped into a single table. For a 1:m cardinality relationship, model each of the related entities in a separate table and post the primary key of the one side entity as an foreign key attribute to the table that represents the many side entity, which means there is two tables instead of one. For an m:n cardinality relationship, model each of the related entities in a separate table and create a new table, which is referred to as the intersection table, and post the primary key of each entity set/type as an attribute in the new table. If the relationship has its own attributes, those attributes are to be stored in the intersection table too. The primary key of the intersection table is a composite key which includes the primary key of each concerned entity type. Then, it will form three tables. The schema is like as follows: Member (user_ ID, name, startdate, password, online, , sex, birthday, location) News (ID, date_ time, category, IP, user_ ID) Reply Record (user_ ID, ID, date_ time) Post Record (user_ ID, ID, date_ time) Read Record (user_ ID, ID, date_ time) In these schemas, we can find that primary keys of the entities which are underlined are user_ ID or ID. This is because each user or thread has its own ID which is unique. For those underlined in dotted lines, they are foreign keys that a foreign key is a referential constraint between two tables. The attributes which underlined in wavy curve is the composite key. P. 16

18 Implementation: In this part, I will show the practical steps of the proposed system. This part will prove the things above are not just theories. First of all, we will create a new file for our design. There will be total five tables in the discussion forum, which are users, news, post record, reply and shown as follow figures. Since the post record, reply record and the read record are similar, so P. 17

19 we will just show you the design view of the post record. After we create these five tables, we need to insert the data into them. P. 18

20 P. 19

21 Then, what we need to do next is to write the SQL to find the statistics and the analysis. First, we are going to find out the posting statistics. The query that used to find out the total threads is like the figure right hand side. Then, to find the number of today s threads, we will have a query like the following figure. The next one is the number of threads posted by a specific user. The query is as follows. P. 20

The query is below. The analysis of the new member of the forum can also carried out by the SQL.

22 Then, the query of the reply numbers of the user is similar. For the user statistics, we can generate a list of the birthday of the users though SQL. The query is below. The analysis of the new member of the forum can also carried out by the SQL. The SQL of finding out which members are registers in one of the year. The users who not post after registered. For the online traffic P. 21

23 analysis, for example, the number of online members can be generated by SQL. The SQL of the total number of users is shown left hand side. The SQL of the number of users registered today is shown below. The last type of analysis, posting habits analysis, can also be shown and generated by SQL. The first one is the categories, which means that which category is the most famous. The latest thread: P. 22

24 The latest reply: P. 23

For testing the system, we need to change the data of the table to see whether the SQL above can be shown correctly.

25 Testing & Evaluation: In this part, the demonstration of all the above mentioned processes and the applications of the implementation processes will be shown. For testing the system, we need to change the data of the table to see whether the SQL above can be shown correctly. First, we can test whether the unique function can run or not. Before this, we need to alter the data type to unique by the following statement: The original and the new data type are as follow: P. 24

26 And then, we try to change the data to see whether it works or not. We try to change the name of the member who User_ ID is 0005; name is Cherry to Bill, which is the name of the user, who User_ Id is As we can see from the above figure, there is an error prompted. We need change the name which is different from any name in the table, before we move to other cells. It means that we cannot have the users who have the same name. Thus, the user name is unique and the function can run successful. Then, we are going to help the users to change the password. We will use the following SQL to change the password of the Leo, who user_ ID is 0024: P. 25

27 Then, after we execute this SQL, we have the following result. As we can see from the above figure, we can see the password, which is the fourth field, is Compared to the original one, which shown in the figure below, we can see the password is changed from to Then, the SQL is successful. Then, we will test the system can whether delete the data of the users or not. We will try to delete the record of Helen, who User_ ID is 0015 statement: by the following After we execute the statement, we can find the record of Helen is deleted, like the figures below: The last thing we want to do is to add a new member in the forum, for example, Helen, who data was deleted in the previous test. We assume that she wants to register P. 26

are shown. Thus, Helen is successfully registered.

The first one is about the posting statistics. The first one is the total threads.

28 again. We will use the following statement: Then, as we can see in the figure below, the data of Helen are shown. Thus, Helen is successfully registered. The results of the SQL mentioned in the previous section will be shown here. The first one is about the posting statistics. The first one is the total threads. The result is 25. And the total number of today s threads is 5. The next one is the number of threads posted by a specific user. For instance, we want to find out the numbers of threads posted by Adam, who user ID is The query is as follows. The result is as follows. P. 27

Then, the result of the query of the reply numbers of the user is

The analysis of the new member of the forum can also carried out by

29 Then, the result of the query of the reply numbers of the user is similar. For the user statistics, we can generate a list of the birthday of the users though SQL. The query and the output are below. The analysis of the new member of the forum can also carried out by the SQL. The result of members registered in For the members who don t post, we should have a look of the table User and Post first. P. 28

30 Thus, using the SQL, we can find that the members in the figure do not have any P. 29

31 posting, like the figure in left hand side. the For the online traffic analysis, for example, number of online members can be generated by SQL. The result of the total number of users is shown below. P. 30

32 The result of the number of users registered today is shown below. The last type of analysis, posting habits analysis, can also be shown and generated by SQL. The first one is the categories, which means that which category is the most famous. The latest thread: The latest reply: P. 31

33 Conclusion & Discussion: To review the whole system, to a large extent, it is successful. The proposed system can generally reach the objective of the project and meet the requirements of the task. It can successfully generate statistics and carry out analysis. Since the system requires the knowledge of SQL, it is difficult to make the system since I am not a professional designer and I have little experience of using SQL in reality. After this project, I learn more about the database, no matter is the usage of the database software or the concept of the SQL. It is beneficial since there may have lots of chances that requires the use of database in future if I have more practices in this aspect. Now, I am familiar with using the database and my ability of solving problem independently is improved. The reason behind is that I have solve most of the problems by myself since my classmates could hardly help me and I could only rely on myself. It is also very easy to make mistakes if the processes are similar, especially in those SQL. Since they are more or less the same, I always mixed up them. Also, this project really requires us to have a good understanding of the SQL, in order to have use less time to do finish the implementation part. Even worse, sometimes you may not know which part of the SQL is wrong since the software had prompted you wrong. Sometimes you may know which part is wrong, but you don t know how to correct it. Moreover, it is difficult to ensure the data inputted are correct. For instance, the start_ date of the user and the date_ time of the post, read or reply. It is very easy to make mistakes in the date. One of the situations is that the date of the posting, reading P. 32

34 or replying is not after the start date of the member, which means that the user is not register yet, but have post, read or reply already. That is not reasonable. To deal with this, we can use SQL to restrict the range of the data inserted. All in all, although this project is very difficult and it is very time-consuming, I think it is a good opportunity to practice what I have leant before. Practice makes perfect. This is a golden opportunity for me to revise what I have learnt in the lessons. P. 33

35 Documentation Websites: Books: <Database for A/AS Level> Raymond W.N. Chan Teachers: My CA teacher, Mr Law -THE END- P. 34

A good example of entities and relationships can be seen below.

A good example of entities and relationships can be seen below. Unit 2: Unit 2: Conceptual Design: Data Modeling and the Entity Relationship Model - Discussion 1 Scroll down and click "Respond" to post your reply to the Discussion questions. Please review the Discussion