Development of a Database System for Exotic Wildlife Trade

Abstract

The popularity to breed exotic wildlife species, regardless of whether they are imported or bred in the country, has been increasing steadily. It is also important to effectively execute the recommendations of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The increase or decrease in the number of wild animals and changes in ownership must be notified in order to confirm their numbers accurately. This study employs the approach of constructing a database system to aid the administration of exotic wildlife by adopting MySQL as a database management tool and using the PHP and JavaScript programming languages to access the database. The constructed database system will aid in a successful management of exotic wildlife species in Thailand and it is to be in compliance with the CITES recommendations.

The developed database system was made up of four primary data tables, i.e., an animal data tables, exotic wildlife species account certificate tables, occupant tables, and tenure tables. The system's performance was tested with the JMeter application, which gave an error of 0%, when tested on a total of 46 real world users in each group of 6 external persons, 6 central officials, and 34 field workers. Based on the evaluation results, it was determined that the lowest user satisfaction rating was 3.91 and the highest was 4.10. The overall user satisfaction level for the developed database system was at the very satisfactory (as indicated by a mean value of 4.07). We conclude that such database system can be used in wildlife protection and preservation of various types of plants.

Keywords: Database system; Wildlife trade; Exotic wildlife species