Reiman Gardens Plant Collections Database (Dec 0806) Reiman Gardens, one of the largest public gardens in Iowa, occupies 14-acres on the Iowa State campus. The facility features plants grown in distinct indoor and outdoor gardens, an indoor conservatory, and five supporting greenhouses. Prior to the spring of 2009, staff at Reiman Gardens used a combination of Microsoft Access and Excel spreadsheets to organize data on the vast amount of plants in the gardens. This system proved to be cumbersome and difficult for staff and volunteers to use. The Dec Senior Design team developed a new web-based system for staff and volunteers to manage plant records using an efficient, user friendly interface. Requirements The product shall store ten types of records: Accession, Genus, Species, Supplier, Location, Reference, Family, Photo, Propagation, and Removal. The product shall allow users to create, edit, view, and search records. The product shall provide user accounts. The product shall generate files containing plant information in a format compatible with label makers. The product shall have the ability to print reports. Design The design concept that has been implemented is web based and hosted by an external web hosting company. Registered and public users can access the system through standard web browsers and navigate between pages using links. CakePHP is a rapid development framework for creating web based database applications. The framework creates abstraction layers that automatically manage much of the low level code. CakePHP strongly emphasizes the Model-View-Controller architecture. Data is stored in the model, the user is presented information in the view, and the controller manages interaction between the model and view. Outcome The Plant Collections Database is currently in use by Reiman Gardens and has proven to be an improvement over the previous system. The deployed system is hosted by Dreamhost and can be accessed at More development information can be found at Testing Unit Testing: During development, each component was tested individually before it was integrated into the project. Integration Testing: When new components and functionality were added to the system, they were tested to verify they performed as expected and did not disrupt other functions. Deployment Strategy: An early version of the system was released to the client for alpha testing. This enabled the client to provide useful feedback early in the development process. Bug Tracking: During testing, new errors were documented as tickets if they could not be fixed immediately. This allowed the team to formally record and manage system deficiencies. Entity Relationships The diagram shows the relationships between tables in the model. Developers Clay Schumacher Cory Simon Josh Weisskopf Rolando Gaytan (Spring Only) FacultyAdvisor Faculty Advisor Tien Nguyen Client Contact (ph) View (Presentation) View (Presentation) Controller (Logic) Controller (Logic) Model (Data) Model (Data) Client