Ideas about student attendance tables

[jonius]

Hello,  I am a final year student and on my project I decide to use php and mysql as I learned it myself (using a book Beginning php5, Apache, Mysql Web Development and Internet) to develop a collage portal.

 

I want to create an attendance system that will use the following details:

 

1. Attendance manager can publish attendance of each student inn daily basis by choosing  either to publish group of students, classwise or individual students.

 

2. Student can view his/her result whenever she/he wants and will display each hour (5 hours) status in each day. The following is an example of how it should look

 

For student name Jonius

 

date        1st hour 2nd hour 3rd hour 4th hour 5th hour

1/1/2009  present  present  absent    leave    leave

2/1/2009  absent  present    present  present  present

3/1/2009  absent  absent    absent    absent    absent

 

etc

 

The problem am getting now is to design a database that will make this structure posible. I don't know whether to create table to each student as in production environment system like this should be expected to handle more that 10000 students for example. Or to do one table.

 

I need help to get start.

[roopurt18]

1) Students are either absent or present.

 

2) There are special actions to take when a student is absent, not when a student is present.

 

3) Students are also more likely to be present than absent.

 

Given the following, I'd say you should only keep track of when students are absent and otherwise assume they were present.

 

table: students

id, first_name, last_name, etc.

 

table: classes

id, title, description

 

table: student_classes

id, term (semester, trimester, or quarter), hour (period of the day, etc), student_id, class_id

 

table: student_attendance -- A record in this table indicates the student was absent

id, student_classes_id, timestamp