CHAPTER ONE

1.1.  INTRODUCTION

It is safe to say that most activities such as hostel allocation carried out in most universities in Nigeria are done manually. Therefore, there is a lot of strain on the individuals running the hostels. An E-Hostel system is simply software developed for managing most activities that take place in the hostels with the help of a hostel administrator.

 The goal of this research work is to provide a solution to the problem of hostel management, by designing a computerized system which is user-friendly and GUI-oriented that will be compatible with the existing manual systems. The software to be developed will solve the problem of hostel management; thus helping to reduce problems associated with the manual hostel management system. The project uses University of Calabar as Case Study.

1.2. PROBLEM DEFINITION

 Problems associated with hostel records when manually handled by hostel staffs in University of Calabar include:

Records are manually written and stored in various registers.

Lots of human errors are encountered when records are hand-written.

The use of numerous registers for hostel allocation can be very cumbersome, hence tracing records become tedious.

Difficulty in maintaining or updating the records, hence, retrieval of a certain dataset from a bunch of registers is almost impossible.

Loss or damage of any of the registers leads to damage of lots of important files at a time.

Lack of data security.

1.3. OBJECTIVE OF STUDY

The objective of this study is to develop an application that will ease the stress associated with the existing manual system as earlier stated, while focusing on the the of University of Calabar.

 This study aims to achieve the following;

To create a database management system (DBMS) which allocates storage to student data and also provides security for the  stored data.

To provide quick and efficient means for gathering the student information along with their rooms, fees, etc.

To find out the possible benefits that will be obtained from the new system.

At the completion of this work, this system will improve the management of student hostels in the University of Calabar.

1.4. RESEARCH JUSTIFICATION

The proposed research can be justified by providing answers to the questions below:

Does the research extend the understanding of the phenomenon being investigated?

Does it elaborate, extend or fill in gaps in present knowledge?

Does the research question require data that is assessable or attainable at a reasonable cost or effort? Research questions were excluded in the proposed system because of the limited time given.

Finally, will it give the expected results result?

After putting these aforementioned questions into consideration, I believe that this research is worth doing. Using UNICAL as the existing system to be investigated, in which the mode of operation is done manually, a certain level of bias will be experienced. The new system to be developed is to manage the allocation process.

1.5. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In order to realize the objectives of this research, it is important to apply adequate strategy in achieving the set goals. The methodology employed in the course of this study is to first outline the set of requirements to be met by the proposed system, where information related to the research work will be derive from the area of study(UNICAL Hosteland Student affair); then envisage and implement the design of the system, using Unified Modeling Language (UML), along the lines of an object-oriented approach.