5. Documented Design

The System will be developed in C#, however a lot of the backend will have to be supported by a correctly-structured database. This can be set up once for a single school or multiple times for many schools; the programs in C# will then be able to communicate with the database and constantly make changes. The language I am using is heavily object-oriented, thus enabling me to create classes to structuralise my code in a meaningful matter. The Desktop program will consist of three main forms, depending on who logs in. Furthermore, the mobile application will also be developed in C# with the aid of Xamarin, an open-source platform for developing Android and iOS apps with .NET and C#. The coding language necessary to design mobile application interfaces using Xamarin is called Extensible Application Markup Language (from now onwards XAML), which shares similarities with markup languages like HTML. The mobile application will consist of a three-tabbed main page which will be displayed only when a teacher is logged in, otherwise a login Content-Page will asynchronously be displayed, requiring the user to enter their login information.

The code will closely interact with the database to make any necessary changes to the tables required, and connections to the database server will only be made when necessary (the applications will not maintain an open connection to the database).