Appeon helps Hung Kuang University respond to school
affairs changes quickly
Background
Hung Kuang University of Technology (hereinafter referred to as Hung
Kuang for short), founded 38 years ago, has undergone expansions from
a junior college to an institute of technology then to a university. Since
1997, Hung Kuang itself has developed five core modules (teaching affairs,
study affairs, environment, human resource, and accounting) in their school
administration system. Changes to the administration process were brought
on by the two great expansions, and enrollment and recruitment processes
also became more complex because of the multiform enrollment project.
This situation pushed Hung Kuang to look for an information system development
environment with more flexibility and efficiency, so that they could respond
to the administration process changes more quickly and provide a more
convenient information system environment to staff and students.
Rapidly increased school affairs volume requires immediate information
system upgrade
Along with the increased volume of school affairs and teaching services,
the loading of information system reached its peak each time a semester
started. Gao Shiqin, the director of Hung Kuang Computer Center, said,
“We have to cope with the online course-selection demands of 12,000
students in a week. According to previous experience, each student will
need to log in/out the system for 20 to 30 times during this period, that
is to say, in rush hours, the system has to handle the load of 1,000 students
per hour.”
Facing operations that demanded a high-loading information system, Hung
Kuang did not have a corresponding manpower increase, so how to flexibly
and efficiently use new technology to maximize the productivity of manpower
became a critical task of Hung Kuang. Mr. Gao said, “In the school
affairs information system, one single change in business logic always
affects more than one program tool and different user interfaces. It is
very difficult for our IT staff to find out all affected places and make
changes in a very short time, and also a very challenging task for us
to flexibly arrange staff with different techniques.
Appeon for PowerBuilder offers quick development and web server flexibility
Facing such a tough situation, the Computer Center of Hung Kuang looked
for a single integrated information program tool. Mr. Gao said,”
We expect the introduction of new development platform to be easy and
fast, without needing to spend a lot of time on training. It is better
to possess the quick development features of traditional development tools
like Delphi and Visual Basic, and meanwhile can automatically support
or provide an easy means to support Web environment."
After careful evaluation, Hung Kuang chose a three-tier architecture
as the new development architecture for the school affairs administration
system. In this new architecture, Sybase Appeon for PowerBuilder, in place
of Delphi, Visual Basic and PHP development tools, was adopted as the
new development platform. This brand new integrated development environment
provided Hung Kuang an integrated user operation interface which possesses
Portal-like functions such as defining roles with different permissions,
so that all user roles such as teachers, students, staff and directors
can use one integrated system.
Web–based system facilitates the usage and improves work efficiency
Ke Shenyao, the leader of the New Solution Development Team of the Computer
Center, analyzed that there are three factors that made their team reach
an agreement immediately and choose the development and migration of the
new system mentioned above. Firstly, Appeon for PowerBuilder is very easy
to learn and use: even an engineer without PowerBuilder development experience
can grasp it via a two-month training program. Secondly, since the application
was converted from a client/server architecture to a Web-based program,
it eliminated the need for installation and configuration on specific
computers. Thirdly, the system can be accessed anywhere Internet is available,
while the application layer that can be developed becomes more flexible
and diversified. Mr. Ke also pointed out, “The observation records
in the 6 months since we started using Sybase Appeon for PowerBuilder
development tool show that the database can attain its previous efficiency
by using only 10% of the previous connections.”
“The brand new Web information environment accelerates our organization’s
electronic processes, enables us to maximize our productivity and focus
on more valuable work. For example, some data, which had to be checked
by manpower in the past, can now be filtered by the system; this greatly
reduces the workload of the staff.” Mr. Gao concluded, “The
new system is highly integrated, owns a comprehensive development solution
and easy to debug. These features help us respond school affairs changes
more quickly, and increase user satisfaction.”
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