UNIVERSITI MALAYSIA SARAWAK

FACULTY OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INFORMATION

TECHNOLOGY

TMP 4913
FINAL YEAR PROJECT 1
TITLE: Android Based Car Rental Application

Student Name: Muhammad Hakimi bin Muhammad Adil (31391)

Supervisors Name: Dr. Halikul bin Lenando

1.1 Introduction
Nowadays, Information Technology is a vital element of everyday life. Daily tasks are made easy by the
use of real life application of Information Technology. The most common application used is certainly
the Internet, where information is shared vastly around the world, at any given moment. Furthermore,
the Internet provides the means for businesses to shift from traditional business model to a modern
one, in parallel with the demands of the ever growing customer base. More and more companies are
shifting to do their business online, where it is more convenient for them to expose their products or
services for the public to purchase and subscribe. The advancement in mobile device technologies also
contributed to the rapid growth of online businesses. Now, it is possible to build mobile application on
various platforms such as Android and iOS, thus making it easier for their customers as it widens the
boundary of the Internet not just on desktops, but on their handheld devices as well.

Therefore, this document is written to propose the development of a mobile application on the Android
platform. Business is the main scope of the project and the chosen business is car rental services.
Hence, the project will be focusing on customers who are looking to rent cars for personal use.

1.2 Problem Statement

The car rental service in Unimas is a booming market, with a large market and no shortage of customers,
which are the Unimas students themselves. However, it is inconvenient for the customers to manually
search for the cars to be rented when they needed to use the service. Usually, they have to make
reservations a day or longer before the actual rental. Another inconvenience that the customers have to
face is the subject of availability of those cars, they have to ask whether there are cars that are available
to rent. All these tedious work are time consuming and cost inefficient as well, as they customers have
to exert additional costs for phone calls and spend some time to find cars that are actually available for
renting.
Car rental business is one of the most demanded services in Unimas and knowing that as a fact, this
project is the first to be made specifically for Unimas students. The creation of an Android application to
cater the demands for rental cars is certainly an efficient way to do business. It will save time, cost and
energy. Implementation of search engine with the application will take the criteria that the customers

desired into account, such as pickup location, car availability, and car model and select the best choices
for the consideration of the customers.
2.0 Project Objective
2.1 Overall Objective
The overall objectives of this project are as follows:
1. Study the use of search algorithms in mobile applications.
2. Implement a search engine within the application to find the best choices of car rentals based
on desired criteria such as location, car model, and availability.
3. Create a user friendly application that can attract the attention of Unimas students, for them to
switch to a new way of doing business.
2.2 Project Scope
The project is going to be develop by the means a full system and will be deployed for beta testing by
the customers, in context, the Unimas students themselves. After the beta testing phase, a full system
testing will be carried out and later be submitted for evaluation by the clients, in context the examiners.
The system functions as a system which stores, process and handle customer information and the
information of the most valuable assets which are the cars.

Type of Users and Their Level of Access

The system administrator: one who has total control and authority to manage the privileges of other
users who are using the system. He is responsible to maintain the system, including updating the system
from time to time. Apart from that, his role is also to make sure that each type of users can only access
the system according to their permitting level. However, with the high level of clearance to the system,
the system administrator does not have the permission to manipulate and distribute the information
stored in the database, as they are confidential.

Registered members: registers membered are the rental car service providers. The system
administrator is to create a profile for car rental service providers using the information provided by
registering, such as their contact numbers, location of service provided, rental car information, and the
subject of service availability. Registered members are allowed to make amendments or updates to the

information given, and more importantly to the subject of service availability if needed, by logging into
the system by using their own chosen username and password. Each information update will be stored
into the systems database and treated as confidential information.

Unregistered members: unregistered user are users that will be using the system most. In scope, the
users are Unimas students themselves. They are the ones that will be using the system to search for
available car for rent. They are restricted to view, update or delete any information about the registered
members information such as car reservation history.

3.0 Project Development Methodology

3.1 Waterfall Model of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

The Waterfall Model of the System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) includes five stages. Each stage of the
waterfall model has their own processes that are needed to be completed before moving on to the next
stages. The stages can be depicted in the diagram below.

Analysis

Project Identification and Investigation

Project Planning
Requirements Analysis

Design

Logical Design

Implementation

Verification

Testing(Alpha,
Beta)
Evaluation

Maintenance

3.1.1 Analysis

Project identification and investigation

The first stage with the waterfall model is the analysis stage. Within the analysis stage, for this project,
the developer must first identify the project to be made by finding out real life problems, analyzing them
and discussed whether is the problem is valid and can be solved by the implementation of a
computerized solution. After a decision has been made on what project to be develop, lots of research
must be done, specifically on search engines which is the core element in this project, before
progressing deeper into the project to ensure that further processes run within the development cycle
are smooth and successful.

Project Planning
After project identification and investigation, the developer is required to lay out a schedule for the
following stage of project development. The timeline for each subsequent stages must be planned
carefully, realistically and clearly identified so that the each stages can be completed accordingly.
Planning stage is important to minimize the risk of project impairments such as low quality deliverables,
scope defects as well as increasing cost of development. Therefore, the developer will create a Gantt
chart as a guide and goal for completing each stage according to the time frame allocated.

Requirements Analysis
The developer is required to do requirement analysis on the system to be develop. The main goal of
requirement analysis is to find out what the potential clients in this context, Unimas students expects
from system by the means out giving out questionnaires and oral interviews. Apart from that, the
developer also has to identify hardware and software requirements needed to develop the project as
the specification of the project running requirements.

3.1.2 Design

Logical Design
The analysis stage is succeeded by the design stage. In the design stage, the developer is to come up
with a design to the address the stated problem by the means of computerized solution. Before going
straight to programming elements, the developer has to make up a concept of how the system will
logically function, hence the logical design. Logical design is the illustration and explanation of the
proposed system by the use of diagrams which includes Data Flow Diagrams (DFD), Use Case Diagrams
and Data Dictionary as well.

3.13. Implementation
From logical design, the development progress towards the implementation stage. The developer is
required to create the proposed system using Eclipse IDE, with the integration of Android Development
Tools (ADT) plugin, since the system is to be run on Android platform. All aspects of the development
must be done according to the logical design from the previous stage. The reason for the rule is if
changes are made to system at this stage, it will also affect the DFDs and Data Dictionary within the
logical design. The creation of database for the proposed system and all the specifications gathered
from the requirements analysis stage will be created in this stage and be implemented into one working
system.

3.1.4 Verification

Testing
In the verification stage, the working system will be put through two type of testing; Alpha and Beta
testing. The alpha testing is done by the developer himself by creating test cases and then testing the
system whether the system fulfill the requirements according to the test cases. Meanwhile, for beta
testing, the developer will host an open beta test among the student of Unimas for them to test the
working system. The beta testing will provide the medium for the developer to gain feedbacks from the
end user which will be helpful for project correction during the maintenance stage.

Evaluate
The full working system is then submitted for evaluation from the client, in this context the examiner.
The system should perform as specified and run as the clients expect. If they feel that there are
corrections to be made, their input is gathered and corrections are to be made in the maintenance
stage.

3.15 Maintenance
The developer is required to make corrections if needed based on the feedbacks gathered during beta
testing and evaluation by clients. After corrections are made, the propose system is deployed for public
use. The developer will acts as the system administrator and maintain the system from time to time,
which responsibilities may involve correction of coding, rapid training and managing the users groups for
the propose system.

4.0 Project Plan

The project plan has been illustrated in graphical which called as Gantt chart that involves the duration
of tasks that showing what is the start and end time for activities in each stage of waterfall model. The
purpose of using Gantt chart for the developer is to help and ensure that every process of the project is
running smoothly and finish each activity successfully. The Gantt chart for the project is as shown in
Appendix 1.