IMPLEMENTATION OF MERGE SORT AND SEQUENTIAL SEARCH METHODS IN A PRACTICUM PARTICIPANT DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

Abstract

Data management for Basic Physics practicum students at the Faculty of Engineering, Mulawarman University, was previously handled in multiple separate spreadsheets, creating risks of data duplication and errors in searching, sorting, attendance tracking, grading, and grade recapitulation. This study aims to develop a web-based data management system for practicum students by implementing the Merge Sort algorithm for sorting and Sequential Search for data retrieval. The system was developed using the Waterfall methodology, comprising requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, and evaluation. Built with Laravel and MySQL, the system used data from 538 students from the 2025 academic year, along with synthetic datasets containing 100, 500, 1,000, and 5,000 entries. We conducted functional testing using Black-Box Testing, and performance testing measured execution time, memory usage, iteration counts, and comparison counts. Test results indicate that all key features operate as designed, and both algorithms achieved lower execution times and memory usage compared to MySQL.