Design and Implementation of Infinity Research Assistant

摘要

University research projects require large amounts of data storage, organization, and coordination. From tracking materials and equipment to managing personnel, documents, and budget, it is highly necessary to have good organization programs. There does not currently exist a customizable and flexible product for easily managing research projects. Infinity Research Assistant is designed to help a research group or a lab to efficiently manage research projects and disseminate the research results. The software allows the principle investigators to be able to use three modules, equipment management, materials management, and project management, to keep track of multiple projects and the associated personnel, budgets, and associated documents and manage inventory of labs, including materials and equipment, and also be able to define new modules to achieve the flexibility and expandability. This paper focuses on illustrating the architectural design of the Infinity Research Assistant. The paper highlights the use of both Client-Server pattern and Model View Controller pattern in the high level architectural design, and use of the design patterns Factory and Strategy Pattern in the medium level design to achieve the flexibility and expandability. This paper also addresses the successful implementation of the software and presents the user interface.