Development of a Web-Based Inventory Management System Project

This project outlines the design and implementation of an online inventory management system. It begins by contrasting offline and online inventory management systems, favoring the latter for its accessibility and multi-user capabilities despite higher initial costs. The project details the selection of PHP as the server-side scripting language due to its ease of use, open-source nature, and cross-platform compatibility, alongside HTML and JavaScript for client-side design and interactivity. The project focuses on the admin's role, defining user rights for tasks such as product and vendor management, inventory updates, and sales reporting. Additionally, the project discusses the selection of web design tools like Adobe Dreamweaver and Google Web Designer, along with the rationale for choosing PHP and MySQL as the backend technologies, considering alternatives like Perl and Oracle DB. The project emphasizes database backup and statistical analysis for business growth, providing a comprehensive overview of the system's design and functionality.

Task 1
An offline inventory management system refers to managing the inventory on a single
system and at a time only one person can manage the inventory. The most popular
example of offline inventory management is that there is a software which is installed on a
system and one person can update the records of the inventory by using that particular
software.
An online inventory management system refers to managing the inventory on a web based
program. In this kind of software inventory is managed commonly on the browser with an
active internet connection. Online inventory can be managed by more than one user at a
time and you also does not need the same particular system to access it you can use it on
any of the system while sitting in any part of the world.
In terms of affordance of both type of inventory management system you have to prefer
offline management system because in that there is one time investment for making the
software and then only we have to use it while on other side online inventory management
system costs high because to make online software is much more higher and also we
have pay regularly for the maintenance.
The constraint of offline inventory management system is that is managed by only one
person at a time by that software and on that particular system. If this work is given to an
inexperience employee than it will be very tough task for him. On the other hand constraint
for online inventory management system is that if we give access of inventory managing to
more peoples than it will produce the ambiguity that is it can be possible that the inventory
will update more than time for a single transaction by the different inventory manager.
An online inventory management system will be very easily accessible across the globe,
more than one manager can be appoint because more than one person can update the
inventory at the same time. Inventory will updated in real time and not much more work for
the person. While the offline inventory management system can only use on the small
business propose and covers very little area though that is offline we cannot access it from
anywhere we always need that particular system to access it.
Task 2
There are many server-side scripting languages are available to make a web based
application, so I will prefer to use php as server-side scripting language to make this
website. The reason to choose php as server-side scripting language are that, as a
beginner php will be the best one to write the code because it is a very simple and easy to
learn while compare to other languages like asp.net,java etc. The next advantage of php
over other language is that it is free for use i.e if we use JSP or ASP we have to buy a paid
hosting but in case of php it is not required because it is free and open source. If we write
the code in php we can use any text editor that is advantage for me while other language
does not provide that facility. php also does not operating system specific I and everyone
can use it on any of the operating system. The best feature of a coding language language
is that it should be object oriented and php holds that property. Php is very light weighted
language so it does not occupy a lot of space on you hosting site and thats why it is very
fast as compared to other languages.

There are also many client side scripting language available in the market and I choose
the most common that are html and javascript.With the help of html I can design my
website in a good manner. There are many attributes of html to make the web page like
div, table, header, footer etc. There is not much alternative in the market of html because
html provides all the latest functionality to make the web page. Html always upgraded its
versions to include all the latest functionality to make a web page. There is html5 in the
market that is the latest version of html and it provide the feature of all device compatible
that is making the website in html5 will make it work on all device whatever will be its
screen size.
Javascript is used to make my page much more interactive. All the effects that I had seen
on other site are done with the use of javascript. As I searched many times to find the
alternative of javascript I failed to find any alternative. I want to use javascript because its
response is very fast. To done anything interactive on a webpage like change the view of
the page, change the font and colour of the text can be easily done with the javascript.
Task 5
While making this online inventory management system there will be one person or
manager who will be the head of everything and I called him Admin and the Admin should
have different user-right functionality and the functionality are here -
First of all there are users who want to see the items so it is the admin responsibility to add
the product in the product list. So every product that has been added by the admin in the
product list admin have to manage its inventory also. Admin rights are also implemented
on the vendor details. To add, update and delete any vendor details admin will take care of
all this. The main responsibility of admin is to keep inventory up to date because there are
many case in which inventory has to update for example when a user order a product and
when the product is dispatched and when admin demands a product from the vendor in
both cases inventory have to updated by the admin.
All the above task are normally done by the admin to run its business but to see its
company growth he have to take out some statistic from the database like all sales report.
Sales report has been fetched from the database and it can only see by admin to analysis
it. Admin generally wants its company sales report every month to analysis to see its
company behaviour in the market. As this is online inventory management system so all
the records of everything is been recorded in the database so it is admin job to take out
database backup regularly at some interval of time.
Task 7
For our website design we can use any text editor which supports to write code in html,
css and javascript. But their are many web designing tools that are available in the market
by the help of the we can easily build the website in our company to build a site we can
use these tools or software by the help of them making a website becomes very easy.
First one is adobe dream-viewer, use of this software will make easy to the designer to
design the website because it commonly used by the designer in this software it will help
you while writing the code to correct your syntax. In this software their is option for the

code and design in which we work in the code part and simultaneously see the result in
the design part so we correct it easily and at the early phase of the designing.
Second one is google web designer, it is also a software in which we can create images,
animations, 3-D images and as well as in this we can write code of html, css and javascript
it supports both the functionality that are creating the images and write code for the
designing website.
The back end coding of our website is done in php and the database server is used for this
is mysql as their are also other option are available in the market for both of the technology
in my opinion the best alternative of php is use of perl because it is a very old language
and also it is free as well as many of the the web hosts support the perl, so you don't have
to pay extra for web hosting. The alternative of mysql is use of oracle db and the reason
are that it is widely used in the market, it provide a great performance over the server, it
does support the sql to its ddl and dml commands, we can easily took backup from that.