A system for the management of meals in academic institutions

Abstract

A system for the management of meals in academic institutions is a vital and crucial aspect of life because it enables different stake holders to organize for meals in schools minus the hectic and time consuming bureaucratic processing of which meals and food combinations to prepare. Currently, most schools have meal timetables generated by school management without the consultation and input of other stakeholders such as students and parents. The aim of the project was to develop a web-based system to enable stake holders in schools to have a faster, less time consuming and easier way of planning for the students’ meal plans and to enable the users of the system to be in position to easily monitor the meals served in schools. Data was collected from different stake holders in different schools using interview guides, observation and looking at related literature. Analysis of the collected data presented user requirements from which functional and non-functional requirements of the system for the management of meals in academic institutions platform were derived. Implementation of the system involved the use of HTML, PHP, and javascript to develop the user interface. The SQLite database was used to store user settings on the computer, MySQL database to implement a support online database for the system and ASP.NET to implement the online website. (Owens, 2006) CSS which describes how HTML elements are to be displayed on the screen was also used to deploy the system. This saved a lot of time and controlled the layout of multiple websites at once.