Integrated%20University%20Information%20Systems

1
Integrated University Information Systems

• Thomas Kudrass
• Leipzig University
• of Applied Sciences
• (Germany)

ICEIS 2006 Paphos, Cyprus May 2006
2
Outline

1. Motivation Why Integration?
2. Sample Business Process
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Sample Environment (HTWK Leipzig)
5. Design of a Target Architecture
6. Current and future work

3
Why Integration?

• Todays information systems characterized by
  Interoperability
• Examples
• Health Care IS
• Electronic Medical File
• Integration of ERP and office software
• Example SAP MS Office
• Integration of DMS and CMS
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
• Why not in universities?

4
Motivation

• am 20.09.2005
• Akademische ServicewüsteDatenchaos zwingt
  Unis in die Knie!
• Academic service desert. Data chaos pushes down
  universities!

5
Requirements at a first glance

• Autonomy of faculties / departments à no global
  services (e.g., email addresses)
• Modularization of study courses
• à avalanche of data exams, prerequisites,
  scheduling of lessons and exams
• IT strategy for teaching and administration à
  centralization at the university
• New innovative systems
• à online services
• à better information quality
• Student as customer (paying fees)
• à increased requirements to the organization

6
Current State at German Universities

• IT usage at German universities
• historically grown system environments
• loosely integrated systems
• incomplete support of business processes
• mainly support of organization-specific tasks
• administration and academic stuff separate
• No standards
• HIS software widespread, no default software at
  German universities
• No document standards for data exchange

7
New IT Requirements at Universities

• Bologna Process
• Modularization of study courses
• Introduction of consecutive study courses
• Development of IT Technologies
• ? Evolution of the IT system environment at
  university
• New Software Systems for Education
• E-Learning Systems (authoring systems, LMS)
• Digital Libraries (e.g., Master Theses)
• Evaluation (E-Questionnaires Voting)
• Proprietary software (e.g., PLANet, jexam)
• Extended functionality of commercial university
  software (HIS)
• OpenSource Systems (Stud.IP)

8
Integrated Information Management

• Overall IT Concept for University Administration
  (Source Department of Science, Bavaria, 20001)
• Characteristics
• Unique data input at the primary data source
• Cross-media processing of the data
• End-to-end support of business processes
• Either evolution of existing systems or
  introduction of an integrated system
• Evolutionary approach bases on integration of
  systems at a data level

9
Outline

1. Motivation Why Integration?
2. Sample Business Process
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Sample Environment (HTWK Leipzig)
5. Design of a Target Architecture
6. Current and future work

10
Sample Scenario (Current State) Introducing a
new course
Request to exam board
accepted
yes
Create new subject
PLANet
LaTex, HTML
Publish in the course list
Add it to the course catalog
Word
11
Sample Scenario (Current State)- 2-
Create new course
HIS-POS
Create new course
LIPS
Enrollment
Participant List
of participantsgt n
yes
Scheduling Planning
S-PLUS
Capture participants
Participant List
12
Sample Scenario (Current State)- 3-
Evaluation
no
yes
Create new course
Eleva
Edit exam results
HIS-POS
Publish exam results
Examination List
End
13
Outline

1. Motivation Why Integration?
2. Sample Business Process
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Sample Environment (HTWK Leipzig)
5. Design of a Target Architecture
6. Current and future work

14
Perspectives of Integration

• E-Learning Platform with portal characteristics
• Ubiquituous access to relevant information and
  services
• Centralized identity management
• New service and infrastructure offerings for
  students
• Coupling with systems of the university
  administration
• Combining information from different sources
• Publication and distribution of course materials
  and documents (theses)

15
Users and Components of an Integrated University
System
Governmental Department
University
Management Information System (MIS)
Universities
Students
Cooperation Partners
Student Relationship Management (SRM)
Information Management
Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Advanced Training Participants
Companies
Employee Relationship Management (ERM)
Employees
Professors
Staff
16
Benefits of Integration Example E-Learning

• Integration of all component systems required
• 3 Aspects
• online-enrollment w/o links to the administrative
  system ? co-operation with the existing HIS
  software
• separate editors ? connection to existing
  authoring systems
• collection of documents (project reports, theses)
  ? integration of digital libraries and other
  archives

17
Requirements (1)

• Communication
• dynamic definition of groups (e.g., mailing
  lists)
• active notification (push) vs. publication (pull)
  ?
• Content Management and Publishing
• access to many documents master theses, work
  placement reports, experience reports from abroad
  
• presentation of the course catalogue (different
  channels and formats)
• e-learning system
• brochure (PDF)
• web appearance of the departmen
• HTML output in commercial system ?

18
Requirements (2)

• Self-Service Functions
• e.g., online enrollment, registration for
  examination
• definition of platform-independent interfaces
• Combination of heterogeneous databases for
  Information Extraction
• example individual timetable enrollment (HIS)
  course schedule (S-PLUS)
• Reporting and Statistics
• required by university management / supervisory
  body (department), e.g., teaching repor
• integration of digital information (course
  evaluation by e-voting and polls)

19
Requirements (3)

• Security and Data Protection
• centralized rights management (definition of user
  groups), using directory services
• some groups only useful at the level of a single
  application (e.g., proficiency levels virtual
  courses)
• uniform identity management
• single sign-on (SSO)
• user provisioning
• data protection
• person-related data
• differentiate services in the internet vs.
  intranet (e.g., students work placement reports)

20
Requirements (4)

• Management of Industrial Partner Relationships
• DB for internships in the region
• DB sponsors and cooperation partners / contacts
• Alumni Relationships

21
Outline

1. Motivation Why Integration?
2. Sample Business Process
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Sample Environment (HTWK Leipzig)
5. Design of a Target Architecture
6. Current and future work

22
IT Environment at HTWKAdministrative Systems

• HIS (Hochschul-Informationssystem)
• SOS Management of Student Master Data
• POS Management of Examinations
• ZUL Admissions
• LSF Publication of Course Information
• QIS Self-Service Functions
• ISY Statistics
• S-PLUS (Course Scheduling System)
• PLANet (proprietary extension to S-PLUS)
• Online-Enrollment System

23
Innovative Applications at HTWK

• LIPS E-Learning System
• LMS on top of ZODB (Zope Object Database)
• authoring system C4K
• Eleva Online Course Evaluation
• University Knowledge Online
• Digiboard
• Usage of Smartcard Technology
• Web Pages
• manual maintenance (HTML)
• heterogeneuous presentation styles
• additional information islands e.g. department
  calendar (MySQL

24
Outline

1. Motivation Why Integration?
2. Sample Business Process
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Sample Environment (HTWK Leipzig)
5. Design of a Target Architecture
6. Current and future work

25
Application-to-Application (A2A)

• Spaghetti Architecture Source Pezzini, Gartner
  Research

26
Hub-and-Spoke Technology

• Design Time
• Modeling of integration scenarios among the
  applications by a central representation
  instead of point-to-point approach

CommonView
Application View
Application View
Transform
Transform
27
Platform OracleAS InterConnect

• Graphical Design Tool
• Common View Metadata
• Transformation
• Adapter
• Content-driven Routing
• Publish/Subscribe
• Request/Reply (asynchronous, synchronous)
• Extensible / SDKs

App2
App1
Adapter
Adapter
XML
XDK
Application View
Application View
Common View
28
Idea Generic Data Service

• Project-Independent Logical Access Layer
• Extensible Set of Physical Data Source Types
• Decoupling of Business Logic and Data Layer
• Access to the Generic Data Service instead of
  the Data Source

29
Layered Architecture
Framework
-
Generic Data Service
Presentation Layer
Business Logic
Data Access Layer
e
I
L
P
c
Q
i
A
v
-
P
S
r
L
e

A
e
Q
S
l
D

c
S
L
b
a
/
e
r
L
O
W
P
30
Integration Goals

• Preserve Global Consistency (Deal With
  Redundancy)
• Avoid Unneccessary Data Maintenance
• Reduction of Manual Activities by Update
  Propagation
• Combining of Data to Implement New
  Functionalities, e.g.
• Generation of Teaching Reports
• Generation Personalized Schedules

31

Sample University Master Data
Eleva
Digital Library
HIS
Digiboard
S-PLUS
VIRPRAK
PLANet
Online Publishing
LIPS
32
Maintenance of Master Data
Master Data Hub
LIPS
HIS
Webservice
Webservice
Back End Application

• Master Data Pool
• Study Courses
• Courses
• Departments

Webservice
Webservice
S/PLUS
Eleva
Webservice
Webservice
Back End Application
Transport Layer
33
The Way to Application Integration Business
Processes
Quelle nach Gartner
34
Analysis of Business Processes

• Identification of Primary Data Sources (Master)
• Informations systems in central administration
  and the departments
• Data Extraction for New Applications
• E-Learning System
• Metadata for Digital Library
• Web Content Management System
• Loose Coupling of Systems
• Modelling using ARIS Toolset (IDS Scheer)
• Integrate different views Organization, Data,
  Functions, Processes

35
Outline

1. Motivation Why Integration?
2. Sample Business Process
3. Requirements Analysis
4. Sample Environment (HTWK Leipzig)
5. Design of a Target Architecture
6. Current and future work

36
Summary

• Incremental Integration Approach
• Development of Generic Data Services Building
  Blocks for Web Presentations
• guarantees consistent data usage
• prerequisite for better reporting
• Services as Process Steps in Workflows
• Task Definition of Standards for Data Exchange
  (cf. similar effort in E-Government)
• Important Overall IT Strategy for University

37
Current Future Work

• Virtuelles Praktikantenamt (Administration of
  Obligatory Work Placements)
• Linking to HIS system
• admission information
• student master data
• Evaluation of Integration Software
• OracleAS InterConnect (part of the future Oracle
  Fusion middleware)
• Cache Ensemble (Integration Suite)
• Modelling and Implementation of Reconciliation
  Processes for Master Data using Middleware
• HIS lt-gt LIPS HIS lt-gt PLANet

38
Last Slide

• Questions ?
• Comments ?
• Further Ideas ?

39
Additional Slides
40
Basic Terms of Integration

• EAI Enterprise Application Integration
• cooperation of heterogeneous applications
• (E)II (Enterprise) Information Integration
• virtual distributed database system (federated
  database)
• Integration Levels
• interface integration
• data integration
• function integration (via API)
• process integration
• Coupling Degrees
• loosely vs.tightly coupled systems

41
EAI Architectures

• Application-to-Application (Point-to-Point)
• Bus Architecture
• Hub Spoke Architecture
• Business Processes
• Service-oriented Architecture (SOA)

42
Bus Architecture

• Publish-Subscribe
• Forward the Messages to the Subscriber
• Usage Dissemination of Identical Mass Data
• 1 producer - n consumers
• n producers 1 consumer
• Data-oriented Integration

• sender and receiver distributed

Services
subscribe
Service Bus
publish
43
Hub Spoke Architektur

• Hub Controls and monitors the data exchange
• Business Rules in Workflow
• Separation of
• System-specific connectors (to connect local
  systems at technical level)
• Workflows (map the business logic)
• Advantages
• supports process-oriented approach
• simpler implementation than bus architecture
• suited for complex data dissemination
• integration of legacy systems beyond organization
  borders
• Disadvantages
• central hub can become the bottleneck

44
Zielarchitektur eines Hochschul-Informationssystem
s
Kombination aus Bus und HubSpoke
Client-Applikationen(z.B. Personalisierter
Stundenplan, Lehrbericht)
Enterprise Service Bus
Services
App1S-PLUS
XML
AV? CV
Hub Common View
App2PLANet
XML
XML
App3HIS
AV? CV
AV? CV
AV? CV
XML
App4ELEVA