Bookbase e-Library system

Abstract

BookBase e-Library System will be implemented at Western College for Management & Technology (WCMT). WCMT is a campus facility with quality higher education programs affiliated to Bolton University UK and Edexcel UK, meeting international standards. The WCMT Campus was established in year 2011 in Mount Lavinia, Colombo with easy access to the students. WCMT is a BOI approved venture, and is a subsidiary of the KES Group of Institutions, which is a global education group, with significant experience in delivering transnational education across India, UAE, and now in Sri Lanka. WCMT currently users an obsolete in-house developed Library system and looking forward to replace the same. This existing system has been developed using a programing language called “Clipper”, which is no more supported by the latest operating systems such as Windows 7/8 or 2012 server. WCMT current holds a book inventory of more than 5000 books across Management, Information Technology, Engineering, Languages, Law etc. With a student base over 1500, and a legacy Library system in operation, WCMT now faces many problems that affect their entire operations. Existing Library system at WCMT is an on premise single machine architectured application with no separation of Database and the Application tiers. The data is stored as xxxx.dbf files and the program code is stored as xxxx.prg source file. These sources have been complied to xxxx.exe files which could be executed on Windows platforms. This obsolete architecture and the limitations of the technology used, greatly affect the applications suitability to the current business operations and the scalability required by the application.