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CHAPTER ONE

1.1.1 Introduction

The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) was designed in 1973
by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) as a placement program for students of
engineering, technology and other allied disciplines in Nigerian universities,
polytechnics and colleges of education with the major aim of bridging identified
gaps between theories taught in schools and actual practices in the field.

The growing concern among our industrialists that graduates of our institutions of
higher learning lack adequate practical background studies required for
employment in industries led to the formation of Student Industrial Work
Experience Scheme (SIWES) by the ITF in 1993/1994 (Information and Guideline
for SIWES, 2002). ITF has, as one of its key functions, to work as a cooperate
entity with industries and where students in institutions of higher learning can
undertake mid-career work experience which are compatible with students area of
study (Okorie, 2002). The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES)
is a skills training program designed to expose and prepare students of Computer
science, Environmental science, Medical science, Agriculture, Engineering, pure
and applied sciences for the industrial work situation which they are likely to meet
after graduation.

Duration of SIWES is four months in polytechnics at the end of ND I, four months

in colleges of education at the end of NCE II and six months in the University at
the end of 200 and 300 levels depending on the discipline (Information and
Guideline for SIWES, 2002).

1.1.2 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF SIWES

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 The aims and objectives of SIWES Are

To provide an avenue for students in institutions of higher learning to

acquire industrial skills and experience in their approved course of study.
To prepare students for the industrial work situation which they are likely to
meet after graduation.
To expose students to work methods and techniques in handling equipment
and machinery not available in their institutions.
To provide students with an opportunity to apply their knowledge in real
work situation thereby bridging the gap between theories and practical.
To enlist and strengthen employers involvement in the entire educational
process and prepare students for employment in industries (Information and
Guideline for SIWES, 2002).

1.1.3 Bodies involved in the management of SIWES

The bodies involved are: Federal government, Industrial Training Fund (ITF).
Other supervising agents are: National Universities Commission (NUC), National
Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and National Council for Colleges of
Education (NCCE). The functions of these agencies include among others:

1. To ensure adequate funding of the scheme.

2. To establish SIWES and accredit SIWES unit in the approved institutions.
3. To formulate policies and guidelines for participating bodies and industries
as well as appointing SIWES coordinators and supporting staff.
4. To supervise students at their places of attachment and sign their Logbooks
and ITF forms.
5. To vet and process students Logbooks and forward same to ITF area office.
6. To ensure payment of allowances to students and supervisors.

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Therefore, the success or otherwise of SIWES depends on the efficiency of the
ministries, ITF, institutions, employers of labour and the general public involved
in the articulation and management of the program. Thus the evaluation of SIWES
in tertiary institutions in meeting up with the needs for the establishment of the
program is necessary.

CHAPTER TWO

2.1.1 ABOUT THE COMPANY.

G7-Bridge Technologies LTD (Bridging the gap between theory and practicals),

Makurdi; located at No. 1 Zion street, Adjacent Redeem Christian Church (Love

Sanctuary), Opposite Convocation Square, University of Agriculture Makurdi. It is

Established and owned by Mr. Okpali Gabriel, a graduate of

Mathematics/Statistic/Computer Science at the University of Agriculture Makurdi.

And ICT Consultant at Benue State University Makurdi (BSU).

The company was established in 2009 but commenced full operations in 2015 with
a focus on the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector of the
economy.

The company has extensive experience in both hardware and software and plays
deep in the entire system development life cycle, incorporating portal design and
implementation. The G7-bridge technology LTD is working to deliver the
technology requirements for the next chapter of the internet and development of e-
services. G7-bridge technologies LTD is a software development company with
extensive experience in portal development technologies, Bank Applications
notably, J2EE among others.

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 They have developed competence in ICT and VSAT infrastructural development to
effectively support our online portal applications. The company has proven
experience in project management and consulting services, web design. Their
engagements are delivered using appropriate methodologies that have their
customers as their focus. They are an information consulting firm with one
specialized area being enterprise application development using portal
technologies. They offer solutions which bring visible, immediate results by
providing their clients with online platforms for their enterprise processes. The
company was established with a mission to harness the power of technology for

Sustainable solutions that automate work processes.

C.E.O

Chief Training Chief Operation

Chief Software
Officer Officer
Development
Officer

Head Sales Head Human Account

Head Head Help
&Promotion Internship Resource Dept
Mobile App Enterprise Desk
Unit &trainingApU Dept
Unit App Unit
nit
Dept
Figure 2.0:G7-bridge technologies Computers LTD, Organizational chart

2.1.2 DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

In the course of the program, series of lectures were conducted, this was enable

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IT students who had no knowledge of object oriented programming to learn and

get used to some of the development tools in this applications.

2.1.3 RULES AND REGULATION OF THE COMPANY.

Besides being enrolled in software engineering class, I was charge after each

training procedure to work on the task allocated to me.

I must resume my training at 9:00am and close at 2pm every day.

Coming late or missing out to the training ground without any reasonable

excuse is not allowed.

Fighting/quarreling is not allowed. So report any problem to supervisor.

Complete all task assigned to me within the shortest possible time.

Report to my instructor on time if I encounter any difficulty in

accomplishing my task.

Use my system to execute all task allocated to me.

Also, I was told to ensure that the computer meant for my IT training was

kept in good shape and in case of any break down, I should report to my

industry base supervisor.

CHAPTER THREE

3.1.1 PROJECTS CONDUCTED

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 During the course of my program I was opportune to work on so many projects,

majorly developed on HTML,PHP, MYSQL and finally I was introduce to JAVA

platform (J2SE in particular) in preparation for second face of the IT. Most of the

projects I participated were group works due to the population of IT students.

3.1.2 SOFTWARE INSTALLED.

a) Net beans IDE

b) Adobe Dreamweaver Cs5

c) MYSQL query browser

d) XAMPP server.

3.1.3 Basic requirements for this phase one

i. Basic programming skill

ii. Net beans IDE (Java compiler)
iii. MYSQL Server
iv. MYSQL connector file
v. Text editing software
vi. Poseidon for UML

3.1.4 DATABASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (DBMS)

Database management system is a system where organized data can be stored,

recorded and retrieved when needed .I developed a Database for G7 students

information using MYSQL query browser and several organizations MYSQL

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 Command line client. I backed up all MYSQL data using MYSQL

Administrator (an application that comes with MYSQL server) for security

reasons. This can be used in real life application to operate on customer and

student record by sending a query message to their Databases.

Below is a snapshot of the process:

Fig 3.0 Database G7 student Information

3.1.5 WEB PAGE DESIGNS WITH HTML.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language. Hypertext means text stored in
electronic form with cross reference links between pages. A HTML file is a text
file containing small markup tags. The markup tags are used to markup HTML
elements. HTML tags are surrounded by the two characters < and >. The
surrounding characters are called angle brackets. HTML tags normally come in
pairs. The first tag in a pair is the start tag; the second tag is the end tag. The text
between the start and end tags is the element content. HTML tags are not case
sensitive. An HTML file must have an html or html file extension. An HTML file
can be created using a simple text editor. Adobe Dreamweaver is a HTML tool

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used for designing web pages with this tool, I was able to design G7 webpage. I
also designed a SLUMBOOK page in PHP. The webpage designs where
connected to database.

Below is a snapshot of the process:

Fig3.1 G7 home page using pure html template.

3.1.6 PHP PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE.

PHP stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a server-side scripting language,

like ASP. PHP scripts are executed on the server. It supports many databases
(MYSQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, POSTGRESQL, Generic ODBC,
etc.).PHP is open source software
PHP runs on different platforms (Windows, Linux, Unix, etc.). PHP is
compatible with almost all servers used today (Apache, IIS, etc.).

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What is a PHP file? PHP files can contain text, HTML tags and scripts.PHP
files are returned to the browser as plain HTML .The files have a file extension
of ".PHP", ".php3", or ".PHTML".
PHP VS MYSQL: PHP combined with MYSQL are cross-platform (you can
develop in Windows and serve on a UNIX platform). I did several works on this
package which include G7 sit where you can read about installation,
maintenance, formatting and you can also read different books. Others are
online Benue link transportation management system among others.

Below is a snapshot of the process:

Fig3.2 G7 reading sit.

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 Fig3.3 Online Benue link transportation management system

Fig 3.4 G7 student login.

3.1.7 SYSTEM ANALYSIS AND DESIGN:

The system analysis and design is also called system development life cyle.

Which include: 1.system request, 2.preliminary analysis/survey, 3.detailed

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 analysis, 4.system design, 5.coding, 6.testing and debugging, 7.implementation

and maintenance. In system design we implore the use case diagram, class

diagram, activity diagram, implementation relationship model/data flow

diagram and entity relationship diagram. The use case diagram has to do with

a set of scenario that describe an interaction between the user and the system.

The arrow that connect user to their operation is called association. Types of

association are 1.the include, 2.the extend, 3.the generalization.

Below is a snapshot of the process:

Sign up
Delete or remove a user
Login

Edit profile Review all the register

Find and add friends

Message to friend
Administrator (admin)
Edit/logout
User
Post static

Logout

Fig 3.5 Use Case Diagram for Facebook

Send mail Send
Login
Login

Reply mail Reply mail

For Include
For Extend

Fig 3.6 Types of association

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3.1.4 UNIFIED MODELING LANGUAGE (UML)

This is the bedrock of designing tools used in object oriented problem solving.
Why is UML important?

Take an instance of a construction trade. Architects design buildings; builders use

the designs to create buildings.

Blueprints are the standard languages that both architects and builders must learn
as part of their trade. Writing software is not unlike constructing a building.

The more complicated the underlying system, the more critical the communication
among everyone involved in creating and developing the software.

In the past decades, the UML has emerged as then software blueprint language for
analysts, designers and programmers; it is now part of the software trade. The
UML gives everyone: business analysts, designers and programmers a common
vocabulary to talk about software design. We have about ten kinds of modeling
diagrams in UML namely:

1. Use case diagrams

2. Class diagrams
3. Object diagrams
4. Sequence diagrams
5. Collaboration diagrams
6. State chart diagrams
7. Package Diagram
8. Activity diagrams
9. Component diagrams

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 10. Development diagrams

The most commonly used ones and ones studied during this exercise are: The use
case diagrams and the class diagrams. Use case diagrams describe what a system
does from the standpoint of an external observer. Use case diagrams are closely
connected to scenarios. A scenario is an example of what happens when someone
interacts with the system. Here is a scenario for manager module of a Transport
Management System. A manager is able to login, create staff, view staff profile,
update and remove staff, view possible route, view available vehicles, view booked
passengers, and so on.

An actor is one who or what initiates the events involved in that task. Actors are
simply roles that people or objects play. A class diagram gives an overview of a
system by showing its classes and the relationships among them. Class diagrams
are static; they display what interacts but not what happens when they do interact.

UML class notation is a rectangle divided into three parts: class name, attributes
and operations. Names of abstract classes are in italics. Relationships between
classes are the connecting links. A class diagram has three kinds of relationships.

1. Association: A relationship between instances of the two classes.

There is an association between two classes if an instance of one class
must know about the other in order to perform its work. In a diagram,
an association is a link connecting two classes.
2. Aggregation: An association in which one class belongs to a
collection. An aggregation has a diamond end pointing to the part
containing the whole.
3. Generalization: An inheritance link indicating one class is a super
class of the other.

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3.1.6 Graphic User Interface (GUI)

The first step to any interface program is to create the interface of the program. For
example, the interface of the text editor requires only a frame, a menu bar

With some menu items and command buttons. This in turn requires the Abstract

Windowing Toolkit (AWT), this defined all the GUI components in java. These
components comprise the java.awt package. There are basically four steps to
creating a GUI. The steps are listed below with an example given for each of the
individual step.

Step 1: Create the component.

A GUI component can be easily created just like any other object in java, simply
call the constructor. Note that the components are typically created in constructor
of a standalone application (or in a private method invoked by one of those
methods) e.g. Jf file=new Jf (file).

Step 2: Add the component to the container. All components must be placed
within a container. Containers in java are all subclasses of java.awt.cnotainer.

Step 3: layout the components within their containers. A layout manager object
can be used to automatically layout the components of a container according to
certain layout rules defined the particular layout manager chosen.

Step 4: Handle the events generated by the components when working with GUI;
it is more common to handle the higher level semantic events that are generated by
the components

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Fig3.7 Student Registration Form

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 Fig3.8 G7 training form

Fig3.9 Personal Detailed Information

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 CHAPTER FOUR

SUMMARY, RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION

4.0.0 CHALLENGES ENCOUNTERED.

1. As an IT student who had no knowledge of Object Oriented language my

major challenge was understanding the logic behind developing standard

applications in J2EE.

2. I also faced challenges in debugging my program code and reading errors on

my JBOSS server.

3. Another challenge was that, most at times the time frame given to

accomplish task assigned to me was short, in several occasions I had to

plead for time to be extended.

4. Inadequate power supply.

5. Lack of accommodation. The company does not have enough places to

accommodate her student.

6. Typing and taking down notes at the same time during software engineering

classes was quite a challenge as well.

4.0.1 SOLUTIONS

Thank God for my understanding industrial supervisor Mr. Gabriel, who assured

me that in learning I should be ready to face difficulties and challenges but what

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will make me stand out against all odds is Determination, those words made me to

believe in myself again.

4.1.1 COMPANYS POTENTIAL AND RESTRICTION.

4.1.2 POTENTIALS.

The company has well qualified and friendly staffers that re well experienced in its

workforce.

It has vast experience in web design, hosting and general ICT consulting services.

In G7 technology there are no spectators for everybody is a team player thereby

creating room for Developing individual intellectual capacity building in software

engineering.

4.1.3 RESTRICTION.

Some of the companys restriction so far includes:

Inadequate furniture and space for software engineering classrooms

Inadequate supply of computer systems as well.

Inadequate power supply.

Lack of projector.

Inadequate board in the class.

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4.1.4 Project management

I was assigned a project topic called G-7 Management System and Benue Link
Online Transportation Management. This was the most challenging task and it took
much time. From this project I have learnt to analyze, organize, plan project and
control it.

4.1.3 Quantitative/Analytical abilities

Some of my team mates needed me to analyze the outcome and make certain
adjustments for a better job quality. Example of such task is the manager module
of a shopping cart project; it has so many tables that needed to communicate with
each other.

4.1.5 Decision making ability.

During the training I was given opportunities to make some decisions that were
related to my task. Although they were minor decisions, however, it gave me the
motivation to perform the entire task successfully, seeing how good decisions
produce good results.

4.1.6 Interpersonal skills

The training has improved my ability in interacting with other people such as peers
and superiors. It was fun dealing with these people, especially when they were
willing to offer assistance and guidance to areas that were so challenging.

4.1.7 Personal skills

I worked with my colleagues on several occasions. I was also able to contribute my

ideas in our work. For the bigger project (Hospital Management System) I worked
with my group mates.

4.1.8 SUMMARY

Summary; of attachment activities, functional skills and computer skills; I

underwent training at G-7bridge technologies Ltd, University of Agriculture

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 Makurdi and had the opportunity to use a few new software; among them are
MYSQL Server Macromedia Dreamweaver, Cascading Style Sheet (CSS). The
macromedia and CSS are for web designs, MYSQL is database used in J2EE
technology while the JBOSS Server is the server that displays enterprise
applications. I also learnt how to use internal network to share and transfer
information and data.

4.2.9 CONCLUSION

In conclusion, there were many things that I experienced and learnt during the
period of the Industrial Training at G7-bridge technologies LTD Makurdi. The
whole period was interesting, instructive and challenging. I was able to gain new
insights and more comprehensive understanding about the real industry working
conditions and practice.

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References:

- European Journal sciences Volume 7, Number 3 (2009)

- Information and Guideline for SIWES Review 2002 pp. 1 41
- Jemerigbo, H. I. (2003). NECA/ITF Interactive forum July 14, 2003, p.3
- Asikade E. (2003) Restructuring SIWES to meet the National
Development plan in educational system. National Conference of
National association for Research Development Asaba, 2003 pp. 1 & 2

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