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A Case Study of the Development of

Document Management System in Oil and
Gas Company
Mohd Hilmi Hasan, and Daliainie Mat Saaid

Abstract—Information resources require proper management that can always ensure they are accessible in any condition. This
can be made possible through libraries that archive all the information documents. The objective of this paper is to present a
case study of the development of a document management system in an oil and gas company. The system was developed in
three-tier web-based architecture, and is able to provide several functionalities namely viewing and borrowing documents and
drawings of gas pipelines. The system is also able to rank documents based on fuzzy algorithm and provide e-mail notification
to users in registration and borrowing features. Two types of tests were performed to evaluate the system namely functional and
user acceptance tests. The latter was performed by a group of expert users from the company that was being studied in this
research. The system was successfully developed and believed can improve the company’s documents and drawings
management. The study implies potential time saving as users may now do the document’s details viewing and borrowing
online. In addition, the study also implies effectiveness in managing the documents and drawings. For future works, it is
proposed that more security measures be implemented to ensure reliability of the system. Moreover, a notification feature to
inform administrators of any requests made by user is also proposed to enhance the system.

Index Terms— Digital library, Document management, Information management.

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1 INTRODUCTION

I INFORMATION and knowledge management play

very important roles in any fields of business nowa-
days. Implementation of information and knowledge
management has become the recent trend to ensure the
organization is ahead of its competitors [1]. Information
resources require proper management that can always
ensure they are accessible in any condition [2]. This can
be made possible through libraries that archive all the
information documents. Libraries promote numerous
significant roles namely information archival, knowledge
and information dissemination, information retrieval,
social interaction and many others [3]. The advancement
in information and communication technology has
changed the nature of information resources, which
among others evolved from physical documents into digi-
tal format [2, 4]. Numerous libraries have realized the
importance of having digital cataloging and computer-
based system to manage the information that they acquire
[5].
This paper presents a case study of document and
drawing management system for an oil and gas company
in Malaysia. This company has a department that keeps
loads of gas pipeline documents and drawings in the li-
brary. There was no library system in place to manage
these information documents. If there is a request to bor-
————————————————
 Mohd Hilmi Hasan is with CIS Department, Universiti Teknologi
PETRONAS, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia.
 Daliainie Mat Saaid is a graduate from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, ganizations to implement web-based document manage-
31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia.
row a document or drawing, the responsible administra-
tor will manually search for it between racks. Moreover, if
there is a need to see details of a particular document or
drawing, the administrator has to be contacted over the
phone, in which he/she requires a few days to reply with
the requested details. Furthermore, there was also no me-
chanism for the company to keep track the document or
drawing borrowing from their staffs. This would result in
worse scenario such as document or drawing might be
lost, late to be returned and many others.
Therefore, a document management system was pro-
posed to overcome the above-mentioned problems. Nu-
merous works have shown that this kind of system will
produce significant benefits to organizations. One exam-
ple is the Quezon City Public Library which has a web-
based library management system to manage their opera-
tions [6]. The work in [2] studies the concept of institu-
tional repositories in e-learning to manage the digital arc-
hive of research documents, literatures and many others.
Document management implementation via web tech-
nology represents knowledge ecology and document life-
cycle model. This lifecycle model comprises five phases,
namely creation, publication, organization, access, and
destruction [7]. The study done in [8] redefines the elec-
tronic document management system (EDMS) by combin-
ing its basic components with auto-segregation feature,
keyword analyzer and result matcher which make search-
ing and retrieving of documents faster and easier. Securi-
ty becomes one factor that may hinder companies or or-
ment system. This is due to the needs of a secure transac-
tion in document management system to avoid from ma-
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licious attack or information theft. The work done in [9]
presents a secured web-based document management
system which implements the integration of digital signa-
ture and PKI technologies. Furthermore, the work done in
[10] presents the document management system that is
applied in a university. It has received positive feedbacks
from students, and proven to be able to improve efficien-
cy and effectiveness of research as well as knowledge
sharing among students.
The prototyping lifecycle was used in this research to
develop the system. A series of testing were done upon
the prototype until it evolved as the final product. The
system contains several functionalities namely viewing
documents’ details, request for borrow, and e-mail notifi-
cation for user registration and confirmation of borrow
requests. Besides, the system does also have a ranking
functionality that presents the popularity of documents
and drawings. Fuzzy algorithm was used to implement
this ranking functionality. The system was published in
the Internet so that the user acceptance test could be
done. This test was performed by seven expert users from
the company that was being studied in this work.
In a nutshell, the objective of this paper is to present a
case study of the development of document management
system for oil and gas company. The system is named as
Document and Drawing Library System (DDLS).
2 METHODS
2.1 Development Tools
The DDLS system was developed as a web-based system
using PHP scripting language. The development was
done using Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 software. Moreo-
ver, MySQL was implemented as the database manage-
ment system, while Apache was chosen as the server’s
operating system.
The system development was done using a Microsoft-
based personal computer. This process included program
coding and functional testing works. Then, the system
was hosted on a Linux web hosting server to make it ac-
cessible to users.
Fig. 1. System architecture.
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2.2 System Architecture
Figure 1 shows the system architecture of the developed
system. It was developed in three-tier architecture that
contains user interface, server, and back-end system and
database. There are two types of users namely user and
administrator. Both types of user access the system via
web browser which requires the Internet connection on
their computers. Their requests or actions will be sent to
the web hosting server.
The DDLS system modules, database and e-mail serv-
er application are installed on this web hosting server.
The DDLS system will retrieve information from its data-
base when a user makes a request for viewing or making
reservation. The similar process applies when an adminis-
trator accesses the system to perform approval, mainten-
ance or update process.
The DDLS also contains a feature which notifies new
users about information on how to activate their accounts
via e-mail. This feature is also functioning to notify users
about the submission deadline of any items they bor-
rowed. An e-mail server application is installed on the
web hosting server to enable this e-mail notification fea-
ture.
As mentioned earlier, the developed system has user
and administrator types of users. Figure 2 shows a Use
Case diagram that represents how the system interacts
with both types of user. A user can perform two processes
which are view documents’ details and request to borrow
the documents. Any borrowing request requires an ap-
proval from system administrator. The developed system
also imposes a rule in which only registered users can
make borrow request. On the other hand, an administra-
tor has an authority to check requests made by users, and
determines whether to reject or approve the requests. An
administrator can also manage the database in terms of
deleting and modifying information, as well as adding
new ones. Figure 3 contains activity diagram that
represents all the activities or processes of user and ad-
ministrator as mentioned above.
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.

Fig. 2. Use Case diagram of DDLS system.

Fig. 3. Activity diagram.

Figure 4 shows the system’s sequence diagram in and this process is handled by the authentication feature
which it presents instruction messages passed among of the system. The document borrowing procedure is in-
user, administrator and the system during execution. itiated by user in which the request is processed by the
Both users and administrators must log in to the system, system’s request function. This process will then require a
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decision of either approval or rejection from administra-
tor.
Fig. 4. Sequence diagram.
The function will then forward the result to user. Be-
sides, the review process initiated by a user will trigger
instructions to retrieve information from database. This
instruction will then forward the requested information
for display to user. Moreover, the editing, deleting and
adding information processed are performed by adminis-
trator in which these processes involve manipulation of
the system’s database.
2.3 System Components
Figure 5 shows the structure model of the developed sys-
tem. The Main module contains the system’s user inter-
face, as well as it integrates all other modules as a single
system. This module also contains the authentication in-
structions of the system. The Admin module handles all
administrators’ activities namely borrowing request ap-
proval, and adding, deleting, and modifying information
in database. Besides, the User module contains features
for users to view information, make request and receive
approval or rejection.
Main
Admin User
Fuzzy Email
Fig. 5. Modules contained in the DDLS system.
57
Moreover, the Email module will be triggered for ex-
ecution when there is new user registered or to remind
users on the submission deadlines of the documents they
borrowed. This module interacts with the e-mail server
application for creating and sending notification e-mail to
users.
Furthermore, the system has the Fuzzy module that
functions to rank documents according to the level of im-
portance and hits count. Figure 6 shows the graph of
Fuzzy degree of membership function (MF) of the docu-
ment.
Fig. 6. Graph of Fuzzy degree of membership function of the docu-
ment.
The universe of discourse, hits, contains three catego-
ries namely low, medium and high. As shown in Figure 6,
these three categories have combined MF degree values at
certain number of hits. Moreover, in this study, the max-
imum hits count was set to 35. The number of hits for
non-combined MF is gained directly from the graft. In
contrast, the number of hits for combined MF is calcu-
lated by using the following formula:
Hits = (((mf1 x 10) x max1) + ((mf2 x 10) x max2)) / (mf1 +
mf2)
Where,
mf1 is MF degree value of the first category, and mf2 is
MF degree value of the second category, and
max1 is the hits value for the maximum MF degree value
of the first category, and max2 is the hits value for the
maximum MF degree value of the second category.
For example, the number of hits for the document with
22 hits can be calculated as follow:
Hits = ((1 x 17.5) + (4 x 25)) / 5
This yields the hit number of 23.5. Another important
point to note is that the documents are also categorized in
terms of their importance, in which there are documents
known as “important” and there also documents indenti-
fied as “less important”. Therefore, all results yielded
from fuzzy calculation will be used to rank the docu-
ments. In this regard, responsible staff of the company
may gain further insight on documents, for example
which important document is hit for more than 15? Or
which less important document is hit for more than 25?
This information is beneficial for them to do additional
analysis.
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3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 DDLS System
Any user has to register a usage account in order to use
the DDLS system. The registration process requires user
to fill in their details and provide a valid e-mail address.
The user registration verification is done by instructing
user to activate their account by clicking on the given link
sent by the system to their e-mail. Figure 7 shows the ex-
ample of the user registration verification e-mail.

Fig. 9. User information form to make borrowing request.

Fig. 7. Registration activation link sent to users via E-mail.

The DDLS system stores all the information of docu-

ments and drawings. Figure 8 shows the interface of the
system that displays documents’ information. Each doc-
ument is identified by its title. User may request to bor-
row document by selecting his/her preferred document
from the checkbox, and followed by clicking “Lend Re-
quest” button. To complete the borrowing request, user
has to fill in information which are name, e-mail address,
start date, and return date as shown in Figure 9. After a
borrowing request is completed, administrator has to ap-
prove the particular request using the interface shown in
Figure 10. The status of any document that is approved to
be borrowed will then be changed to “Lent item”. User
will be informed about the status of their request through
e-mail.
Fig. 10. Administrator’s page to approve users’ requests.
3.2 System Testing
The DDLS system has been published in the Internet by
hosting it on a hosting server. The system testing was
done by allowing respondents to access and use the sys-
tem from the Internet. Two types of testing were per-
formed in this study namely functional and user accep-
tance testing. The former was done by the research team
members, in which the system’s functionalities were
tested based on the test cases that correspond to user re-
quirements. All the test cases, which comprise features for
both users and administrator, had successfully passed.
For user acceptance testing, seven expert users were
involved in the process. These users are professional
staffs of the company of this case study, who regularly
use the manual process of keeping documents and draw-
ings in their daily job assignments. The results of the test-
ing that had been carried out are presented as follow:

Fig. 8. Documents’ information displayed on system interface.

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Fig. 11. Question: How would you rate yourself as an internet user?
Outcome: beginner (1), good (2), expert (4).
Fig. 12. Question: Before answering this survey, how familiar were
you with the DDLS system? Outcome: not familiar (1), visited the
system (6).
Fig. 13. Question: How many times have you visited the DDLS sys-
tem over the last month? Outcome: 1 to 3 times (4), 4 to 6 times (2),
more than 10 times (1).
Fig. 14. Question: How many items have you viewed from the DDLS
system over the last month? Outcome: none (1), 1 to 3 (3), 4 to 6 (1),
7 to 10 (2).
59
Fig. 15. Question: Do you have any dificulties in using the DDLS
system? Outcome: no (7).
Fig. 16. Question: How beneficial is the DDLS system to you? Out-
come: beneficial (3), very beneficial (4).
Fig. 17. Question: How would you describe your experience using
the DDLS system? Outcome: good (1), excellent (6).
The last three questions asked in the user acceptance
test were about the DDLS system performance with re-
gards to level of difficulty in using it, its benefits, and the
respondents’ experience when using the system as shown
in Figure 15, Figure 16 and Figure 17 respectively. Based
on these three questions, the composite respondents’
feedbacks were determined in which four system catego-
ries were defined namely worst, poor, good and best.
Figure 18 shows this outcome, in which 81% of the feed-
back is rated as best, while 19% is rated as good. There is
0% rated as poor and worst.
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national Conference on Information and Multimedia Technology,
2009 (ICIMT '09), 2009.
[9] J. Shi and J. Ouyang, “eSign: An Enterprise Portal for Secure
Document Management,” IEEE International Conference on In-
formation Reuse and Integration, 2005.
[10] H. Baban and S. Mokhtar, “Online Document Management
System for Academic Institutes,” 2010 International Conference
on Information Management, Innovation Management and Industrial
Engineering (ICIII), 2010.

Mohd Hilmi Hasan obtained his Bachelors of Technolgy (Hons.)

inInformation Techology from Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS
in2002. He then received Masters of Information Technology (eS-
Fig. 18. Composite respondents’ feedback on the DDLS system cience) from The Australian National University in 2004. Currently, he
performance. is working as lecturer in Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, whichhis
roles amongst others are teaching and doing research. His re-search
interests are mobile computing and artificial intelligence. Hehad se-
cured a number of research grants from the university’s inter-nal
4 CONCLUSION grant as well national grant awarded by Malaysian government.

The objectives of this study had successfully been Daliainie Mat Saaid was an undergraduate student of Universiti
achieved in which the developed system allows users to Teknologi PETRONAS. She graduated and obtained Bachelors of-
Technology (Hons.) in Information and Communication Technology in
view documents and drawing details, request for borrow 2011.
and receive notification regarding registration and bor-
row requests via e-mail. By having this, it is believed that
the system could benefit the company that was being stu-
died in this work to manage their pipeline documents and
drawings.
The system requires a hosting server to locate its PHP
application modules, databases and also the e-mail server
software. The system also contains fuzzy algorithm to
rank documents based on popularity. The system was
developed in 3-tier architecture in which users may just
use the system through web browser application inter-
face.
For future works, security measures can be en-
hanced to allow only authenticated users to register as the
system users. Furthermore, the system could also be em-
bedded with notification feature to inform administrators
of any requests made by users. This notification allows
information to be pushed to administrators that enhanced
the system as a whole.

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