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 VISIBROKER
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
 Tool — VisiBroker
Industry — Education
Application — Harvard Educational Records System (HERS-2)
Database Server — Oracle
OVERVIEW
- Harvard University needed an information system capable of meeting diverse and demanding needs of student, faculty, and administration. The system had to integrate legacy systems, transition seamlessly from existing systems and processes, and be readily enhanced as requirements evolved.
- Working with solutions provider Nevo Technologies, the university implemented a multi-tiered information environment using distributed object technologies and Java clients. The key CORBA® component in this solution, Borland's VisiBroker ORB™, implements distributed business objects that isolate the applications from data storage and enforce business rules.
- The new system will eventually give open information access to the thousands of students, faculty, and administrators who need it, instead of having to funnel it through a few highly skilled computer experts.
- The enterprise-wide Java-based information system fully met design and cost objectives and established a firm foundation for ongoing system enhancement.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
- Nevo Technologies estimates that the productivity improvement for developing and deploying the multi-tier HERS-2 project, compared with traditional client/server development, exceeds 2X.
- A six-person team progressed from initial concept to initial deployment in under seven months, a 65 percent gain over the projected time-requirement estimate of ten staff years.
- The VisiBroker system helped preserve Harvard's investment in extensive multiple legacy data sources by enabling their transparent integration in the HERS-2 system.
- The multi-tiered thin-client architecture eliminates the need to install client software, significantly reducing the overall cost of system implementation and long-term maintenance support.
INSTITUTION BACKGROUND
Harvard University is America's leading institution of higher learning. Founded in 1636, its graduates include world leaders in every field of endeavor. Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences enrolls 11,000 students in degree programs, employs approximately 1,000 full-time senior faculty (including 34 Nobel prize winners), and offers more than 4,000 courses. The 14,000,000 volume Harvard University Library ranks third in the United States, its collection surpassed only by the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library. With an annual operating budget in excess of $1.5 billion, Harvard is consistently ranked as the #1 higher education institution in America.
SITUATION
The Harvard Educational Records System was put into operation in the late 1970s. The system provided transaction processing for 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students in Harvard College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Like many systems of its time, it was efficient but complex to use, requiring highly trained operators. Furthermore, extracting analytical information for strategic decision making was extremely difficult. Increasingly, students, faculty, and administrators required direct access to critical information. To meet the needs of these constituents, a myriad of shadow systems had been developed.
The University administration recognized the need to replace this legacy system with a new information environment. The new system had to be Web-based to facilitate installation and support; it had to facilitate the rapid development of information access applications for students, faculty, and staff; and it had to integrate not only the existing legacy system, but multiple legacy data sources throughout the institution as well. Considering a variety of design alternatives, Harvard recognized that this mission-critical information system would need to meet as-yet-undefined needs over a long period of time. The ability to enhance and extend the system capabilities, therefore, was extremely important, as was the requirement for scalability to accommodate the extensions that would surely come.
Harvard elected to implement a three-tiered, distributed object solution. IT management selected Nevo Technologies to develop the system, considering the solution provider's extensive experience with Java and objects, as well as its proven implementation methodologies for introducing change into a large operating organizations. Harvard's commitment to thin clients was critical to meeting two of the project's goals: ease of enhancement and reduced long-term support costs. With Java as the language of choice for both client and server development, and with Oracle already chosen for the primary database, the selection of the middleware component became the most important design decision. For this, Nevo selected VisiBroker from Borland because of its dominance as the leading CORBA ORB, the overall maturity of the tool, its functional strength, and its complete integration with the Java environment.
SOLUTION
Development of HERS-2, the second generation of the Harvard Educational Records System, got underway in July 1997. Beta release of the first modules occurred in December 1997, with full production release two months later in February 1998. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences Course Catalog, an 800-page document describing each of the 4,000 courses available to students, is the most visible output from the new system. The new system is dramatically easier to learn and use than its predecessor, HERS. Training time, formerly measured in months, now takes just hours. Most importantly, senior staff in the Office of the Registrar are freed to concentrate their efforts on larger professional responsibilities, rather than managing the nuts and bolts of operating a complex, cryptic computer system.
VisiBroker enabled a system that maintains both the Oracle database and legacy UNIX files automatically, without any burden on either the application developers or end users. The benefit to Harvard is both a smooth transition to the new system from the old, and a complete integration of the legacy environment. Any functions that still await migration to HERS-2 can still be run by the legacy HERS-1.
The benefits to Harvard of a three-tiered architecture with thin clients, distributed business objects, and persistent data storage are substantial throughout the life cycle of the system. In development, the combination of Java and VisiBroker produce major gains in programmer productivity through both abstraction and reuse. In deployment, the use of thin clients eliminates the need to configure client machines and load drivers and software on each one. Furthermore, because the entry point to the applications is a browser, the environment is inherently familiar and comfortable, reducing training time and costs. In the maintenance area, Harvard benefits by eliminating the need to update client software and maintain and upgrade client configurations. Each time the user points his browser to the application location, the latest software is delivered. The only requirement is that the browser be Java-enabled. Finally, and most importantly, the careful design of CORBA business objects provides a powerful, easy-to-use mechanism for the ongoing extension and enhancement of these applications in the future by clearly defining the interfaces, and, through the Visibroker ORB, providing universal access to them.
TECHNOLOGY
Legacy system
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Proprietary applications, written in C, running on UNIX servers
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Database server
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Primary server: Oracle8 on Windows NT; applications integrate data from other Unix and databases
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Data sources
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title
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Platforms
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Windows NT (primary server OS), UNIX (legacy server), Windows 95, 98, NT, Mac OS (clients)
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Networks
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TCP/IP
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Number of users
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30 in the earliest release, growing to 10,000+ as direct access is provided to more faculty and students
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DEVELOPMENT
Middleware used
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VisiBroker for Java and C++
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IT solutions provider
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Nevo Technologies, Cambridge, MA
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Team size
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10 developers
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Development time
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24 months
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Deployment date
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February 1998 (initial deployment), project completion date is June 30, 1999
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CUSTOMER COMMENTS
“To meet our long term strategic objectives we needed a multi-tiered, distributed solution. Without VisiBroker for Java, it would not have been possible to achieve our goals.”
—Keith Borgen, Senior Manager of Computer Systems,
Harvard University
PARTNER CONTACT
Visit Harvard University's Web site at www.harvard.edu
Visit Nevo Technologies' Web site at www.nevo.com
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