Database Reference
In-Depth Information
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Faculty teaching assignments need to be updated.
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Each new student will be assigned a faculty member as his/her advisor.
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he course descriptions need to be updated each semester, and so on.
he next step is to identify the information that needs to be presented to front-end users. For
example
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he students need to view their grade reports.
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Before class registration, the students need to know the course prerequisites.
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he dean needs to view the faculty's teaching loads.
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he Admissions Oice needs to view the class schedule.
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Faculty members need to view the teaching schedule, and so on.
To assist the front-end users to accomplish these tasks, many GUIs can be developed to allow
the front-end users to manipulate data without using SQL commands. GUIs are also used by
database administrators for database management. A GUI consists of labels and controls such as
buttons and text boxes. For database applications, forms and reports are the two types of com-
monly used GUI.
Before developing a GUI, let us examine some GUI examples for database applications and get
to know the features provided by each of the controls.
Form
: A form can be used to help front-end users to insert data into a database or update
the existing data in an existing database. Figure 9.1 shows a set of controls commonly used in
a form.
When working with an electronic form, front-end users are able to enter data through a text
box. In a combo box, the users can select an item from the drop-down list and edit the selected
item. hey can start an action by clicking the command button. hey can also make a choice
Combo Box
Menu
Label
Te xt Box
Radio Button
Image
Command Button
File Upload
Figure 9.1
Form.
