CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Car Rental System (CRS) is a web-based system for a company that rents out cars. This system enables the company to make their services available to the public through the internet and also keep records about their services.
The world has become a place where there is a lot of technological development, where every single thing did physically has been transformed into a computerized form. Nowadays, people’s activities have been transformed into work done by computerized systems. One of which is the main target of this project which is about Car Rental System. The system of renting cars exist back in the previous years, where people rent cars for their personal reasons. Car renting is essential to many peoples’ plan to travel or move from one place to another for business purposes, tour, and visit or holidays, for these reasons Car renting is very helpful.
The starting point of Car renting is really unknown as said by Thomas Pretty, he also mentioned that many beliefs that Joe Saunders was the first man to start a Car renting company. According to Thomas Pretty, charges were calculated with the help of mileage tracking device. Many people became interested in the Car rental business and hence got involved. Car renting became more popular as years pass by. Today Car renting services is found all over the world, especially in developed and developing countries. To make this service more popular and accessible to the public it has been transformed into a web-based system and connected to the internet where everyone can be able to have access to it.
1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The problem with some of the current system is that:
- Based on observations, some small companies already have a car rental system which is not a web-based application. This is a limitation that gives them the capability to store customer’s details, but at the same time they cannot make their services more available to the public through the internet, they rather make use of posters to advertise their services to the public. These types of companies can overcome these problems by switching to the web-based application of their type of system.
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The main objectives of this project are:
- To develop a web-based system that will help manage the business transactions of car renting.
- To help in advertising the car rental services of a company, through the availability of the system online.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
There are two categories in which the researcher has classified the questions.
1.4.1 DOMAIN RESEARCH QUESTION
- How the system will help in car scheduling?
- How the system will affect the operation of the renting company?
- How the proposed system is different from existing systems?
- How to integrate online payments by credit cards?
1.4.2 TECHNICAL RESEARCH QUESTIONS
- Which scripting language can be used for the proposed system?
- Which data base system can be used for the proposed system?
- How the different feature can be implemented into the system?
- Which web authoring software can suits best of the system?
1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROJECT
The significance of this project work, Car Rental System (CRS) is;
- Eliminate the manual methods used in automobile organization.
- Stores information of all cars in the organization.
iii. Management of all rented cars
- Provide complete details of rent and non-rent car.
1.6 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY
During this research work, there were lots of limitations and they include:
- Lack of enough information for the design of a new system, due to poor understanding of the effects of the uses of the computer system.
- Error in data collected for the analysis and design of the new system.
iii. Distortion due to human factors such as stress, fatigue, sickness and weakness of the body within the period of this project work.
- Lack of enough funds.
1.7 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The scope of this project is as follows:
- The car rental system to keep detail records of both the cars and the customers, the duration they rent a car as well as the type of car they rent.
- The system will be mainly designed for small a company that renders it car rental services to customers.
- The system will have the ability to generate and print an invoice for each successful transaction.
Level of Access:
The system will have two levels of access:
- The administrator
- Customer
- They also make use of phone call reservations which is also limited to many features as compared to a web-based system. For example, a customer may make a phone call reservation for a particular car, but when he/she comes to pick the car, he/she might turn not to like the car; this could be because the customer could not see a sample picture of the car he/she wants to rent
1.8 DEFINITION OF TECHNICAL TERMS
Below are some technical terms used in this project work:
- ICT: Information and Communication Technology is often used as an extended synonym for information technology, but is a more specific term that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals), computers as well as necessary enterprise software, middleware, storage, and audio-visual systems, which enable users to access, store, transmit, and manipulate information.
- Knowledgebase: is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems which were the first knowledge-based systems.
- Machine: A mechanical or electrical device that performs or assists in the performance of a human task, whether physical or computation.
- Mobile: Capable of being moved.
- System: Set of computer components. That is an assembly of hardware, software, and peripherals functioning together.
- Software: Series of instruction that perform a predefined task. Instructions that cause the hardware- the machines to do work.
- Car: A conveyance, a device for carrying or transporting substances, objects or individuals.