1. INTRODUCTION
Recently, companies, organizations and governments compete one another
in creating efficient and high-performance systems to run and mange big
data. In other words, web-based systems play a vital role in organizing,
storing and managing information which is sometimes impossible to do
with classic paperwork. According to [1], information management is
“the management of the processes and systems that create, acquire,
organize, store, distribute, and use information”. It helps people to
use information in adequate ways.
Information management is best done with web-based systems. Web-based
systems are the applications that run in a web browser [2]. [3]
and [4] mentioned advantages of managing customer information such
as increasing business performance, customer satisfaction, loyalty and
profitability. Web-based systems have been used for managing student,
examination, medical, transportation, weather and organization
information [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10],
[11] and [12].
In this paper, a web-based system will be proposed for solving the
problems that the supervisor of a local electricity generator faces in
managing customer information in Kurdistan of Iraq. They use paper bills
each month to write information of nearly one thousand customers which
include the number of amperes, price of the amperes, customer name and
date. So, the process is really both time and money consuming. They get
nearly one thousand bills from a photocopy shop. Despite the mistakes
they do in writing of customer name, number of amperes and price per
ampere, it takes almost a week to fill in the bills by handwriting
(manual method). Moreover, each month price of ampere, some customer
information and numbers of amperes are changed, which makes the
management process even more hindering.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows: Related work is
reviewed in Section 2. Methodology is explained in Section 3.
Results and discussion are
presented in Section 4, and Section 5 summarizes major conclusions and
plans for future work.
2. Related Work
Web based systems have been presented by many researchers for managing
information in different areas such as non-government organizations,
guiding visitors, health care and education. Reducing organization’s
paperwork and managing customer information have been presented by
[11] and [12] who created web applications to manage partner
customer interactions.
PHP, SQL and Google Map have been used for creating a web application
for guiding visitors and students to find University of AKRON Buildings.
The app can be used in different devices including mobile, tablet and
computers. They used MYSQL database for keeping app information
[13]. Also, [14] created a web and mobile application named
GuideMe for guiding visitors who want to visit the country of Sri Lanka.
In the app, MSSQL database and ASPNET have been used for managing
visitor’s and App’s information.
With regard to healthcare systems, some researches have been reviewed.
Firstly, [15] used HTML, CSS, ASP.NET for designing a healthcare
system. They used SignalR in the system for real-time functionality.
However, as they mentioned, their system lacks a high level of accuracy,
privacy and security. Secondly, [16] developed a hospital database
management system to store doctors’, staffs’ and patients’ information
in a hospital in Nigeria. Apache Server, PHP and MYSQL were installed in
a server computer. And the clients only needed a standard computer with
Mozilla browser and a Local Area Network in order to connect to the
server. The system consisted of administrative, receptionist, doctor,
pharmacy, nurse, laboratory and accountant parts. Information of the
mentioned parts was stored in the MYSQL database. Whereas, a drawback of
the system to be stated is that it worked only inside the hospital. The
system information could not be accessed outside of the hospital.
Lastly, a database management system for company’s drug information has
been developed by [17]. In the system, Microsoft Azure cloud
services, Microsoft SQL server database, ASP.NET and Visual Basic have
been used.
The last two papers are related to education. Hou developed a web
application for examination purposes. The application was designed with
C# for programming, ASP.NET for designing and MS SQL for the Database
of the system. It was designed only for computer screens, no other
devices [18]. [19] proposed a system for dynamic English
listening question bank. In the system, random exam papers with audio
files were generated automatically. The system was designed through
ASP.NET, IIS web server, windows server 2008, Internet Explorer browser
and Microsoft SQL server 2005.
Despite of the advantages and outcomes of the reviewed works, they have
drawbacks and we try to avoid in our work. For example, some of the
systems could not support different devices; some others could not be
accessed everywhere because they were not hosted in the cloud; while in
others new web technologies services have not been used. Therefore, we
have developed a web system that is hosted in the cloud so it can be
accessed anywhere around the globe. Since, it used bootstrap framework,
it is responsive to every smart device. The most up to date web
technologies services have been used to enhance efficiency, accuracy and
performance of the system. Furthermore, the system is designed in such a
way that, in case of having big data, it can be updated with newer web
technologies for example it can work with the approaches proposed by
[20] and [21] about how to process and organize large amount of
data in the cloud.