CSC 340 Assignment Two Laboratory Animal Services Of Cornell University Team 3 David Gilbert Anna Krolikowska February 1st, 2002 Professor: John Mylopoulos TA: Attila Barta1Table of Contents Organization 3 The Current System 3 A Problem 4 Preliminary Solution Requirements 4 Proposed Alternatives 5 Detailed Description of the Selected Alternative 6 System Requirements 8 Functional Requirements 8 LAS Remote Location Subsystem 10 Accounting Office Subsystem 10 LAS Management Subsystem 11 Printer Subsystem 11 Software Maintenance Subsystem 12 Data Base Administration Subsystem 12 Client Subsystem 13 Non-Functional Requirements 14 Interface Requirements 14 Performance Requirements 15 Operating Requirements 16 Lifecycle Requirements 17 Economic Requirements 17 Human Factors 17 Testability 17 Appendices: Appendix A-Use Cases 19 Lab Technician 19 Accountant 20 Las Manager 21 Client 22 Printer 22 Software Manager 23 Database Administrator 23 Bigger Picture 24 Use Case Descriptions 25 Appendix B-Class Diagrams 27 Data Dictionary 28 Appendix C-Sequence Diagram 36 Providing Services to Client 36 Census Data Entry 36 Bill Information Extraction 372 Bill Processing 38 Appendix D-State Diagrams 39 Accounting Office 39 Remote Location 40 Researcher 41 Appendix E-Correspondence and Contacts 423ORGANIZATION Laboratory Animal Services (or LAS) is a unit within the College of Veterinary Medicine, at Cornell University, that provides specialist services to faculty members who use animals for teaching or research. Essentially it provides physical and human resources for the excellent care and health maintenance of animals used in teaching and research at the College of Veterinary Medicine. The unit maintains several different animal facilities. Each facility is dedicated to a species of animal and varies in terms of sophistication of facilities and resources. For example, horses may be kept on pasture with run-in sheds, in stalls, or in high security stalls for work with infectious diseases. LAS also has facilities for veterinary care of these animals and even surgical facilities. LAS provides housing, care, and veterinary services to several species including mice, rats, guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, dogs, sheep, cattle, horses, pigs, fish, birds (including poultry) and more. The nature of the services ranges from basic food and care, routine observation for general health, consultations with veterinarians specializing in laboratory animal care, etc. In some cases, LAS provides all of the veterinary care of animals. (In others, where the researcher or teacher is a veterinarian, that person may elect to provide veterinary care him or her self.) The Unit finds itself responsible for advising investigators and teachers on the relevant local, state and federal regulations, and also responsible for making sure that those regulations are not breached. (This is sometimes quite a difficult position for them.) So, they will help with writing of animal care and use protocols, and then scrutinize those to make sure they comply with regulations and are passed by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (a federally-mandated committee). Once the paper work is in order, LAS will order or procure animals from vendors, arrange for transport, acclimate animals to new surroundings, house feed and care for the animals. They also provide some technical support. For example, relatively few research technicians know how to hold and handle mice or rats so that neither they nor the animals get hurt, etc. After the research or teaching is over, LAS will help with adoption, sale, etc, of the animals. Financially, LAS is a break-even operation. The law does not allow them allowed to make or lose money. This makes accounting and efficiency very important. THE CURRENT SYSTEM Researchers that use LAS facilities are billed on a monthly basis for the services provided. Census data from each facility is compiled manually onto handwritten forms that are then sent to the centralized accounting office. The handwritten forms are then entered into an Access database containing rates by species, researcher name, and general ledger charging data. When the keying in of this information is complete, the data is exported to an Excel spreadsheet to verify that the rates charged by species are correct. Two copies of the invoices are then printed. One is mailed to the accounting office of the researcher that is being billed, and the other is attached with the corresponding handwritten forms, and filed away. Customers have one week to respond with questions, changes in general ledger attributes, etc. The bills are done by animal type, and housing4type (some are special cases, e.g. isolation). Daily rates are established in advance for each species. Sends info Sends Bills A PROBLEM The fact that all of the census and billing information is originally done manually, instead of digitally, creates some problems. These handwritten notes are often hard to read. Once the notes reach the main accounting office all the data is keyed into a computer. An accounting staff who has no idea how the LAS facilities actually work does this keying. This is obviously very problematic. Due to the fact that the staff does not understand the work and process of the facilities, hard to read and/or ambiguous notes can lead to incorrect data being entered into the system. Also, often times the billing forms that LAS staff fill out at all of the facilities are not set up to capture enough data in some cases. This leads to more confusion and ambiguity. It is clearly very time consuming for all of the data from all of the separate facilities to be transported and keyed into the computer by one person. It is not very time or cost efficient. This is especially a problem when money is so tight and the budget has to be perfectly balanced (due to the fact that it is a non-profit unit). The financial position of the unit needs to be improved, and an optimization of this billing system would contribute substantially. PRELIMINARY SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS Clearly the system needs to be
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