The Role of Standards and Open Source Software in

Student Information Systems

Jerald Bracken jeraldbracken@gmail.com

April 4, 2012 AACRAO SPEEDE Committee

Open Source: software whose source code is published and made available to the public, enabling anyone to copy, modify and redistribute the source code without paying royalties or fees

• Development Process is Open • Favors “Agile”, Pragmatic Development • Active Community Support • Commitment to Standards • Innovation • Higher Quality Software

Examples:

• Linux – Operating System

• Apache – Web Server

• Java – Language & Virtual Machine

• Tomcat – J2EE Application Server

• Glassfish – J2EE Application Server

• MySQL – Database

• Moodle – Course Management System

• uPortal – jasig Portal Framework

• CAS – jasig Central Authentication Service

• Kuali Student – Modular Student System

“Kuali Student (KS) is a community-source, next-generation information system designed to meet the business needs of students, faculty and institutions throughout the academic lifecycle. The software is being incrementally produced by a dedicated community of international higher education partners and distributed through the Open Source license. It achieves a rich user experience through user-centric design and offers a modular, scalable system through service-oriented architecture. Because of this modular nature, it can be integrated with legacy and enterprise systems to meet your institution’s current business needs. With its service oriented architecture, Kuali Student can be configured for how you do business today and how you'll want to do business tomorrow.”

http://kuali.org/ks

http://kuali.org/ks/modules

http://kuali.org/ks/timeline

Things I liked about the Kuali Student Project: • Early commitment to AACRAO SPEEDE Standards • Early innovative thinking about how student

systems should be built • Commitment to Java and J2EE standards • Commitment to web services • Promise of an open development process

But I worried about the sustainability of this effort

But . . . • Not as Open as I would have hoped – Pay to Play,

Consortium development

• Design and Development of “Infrastructure” components like Rice (middleware) and authentication and authorization models consumed much of the early development effort

• Work is not to the point that we can see the “proof” of their commitment to AACRAO SPEEDE Standards

• Not to the point that we can see the degree of innovation that has made it into the project

But . . . • Taking much longer and consuming more resources than

I would have expected. Is this because of politics or prolonged

discussions over governance, funding, architecture, project approaches, etc.? Did they choose a “waterfall” development methodology over an “agile” approach? Or, have I grossly underestimated the scope of work?

• Interoperable Modularity is very difficult to achieve in reality

• Web Services as a mechanism to provide interoperability is very difficult to do in reality

• The commitment of the Kuali membership has been nothing short of phenomenal

Is there Room for another Open Source Student System?

Depends: • Expertise – Technical and Functional

• Community of passionate developers with time and resources

• Shared Vision

• Modules

• Modularity implies interoperability

How would I approach it? • Open, vetted data model with build scripts and data

conversion examples. A reasonable , coherent data model will

drive the first round of innovation – Early validation of the data model will pay dividends later on in the project. Part of the data model validation process is presentation prototyping. In some frameworks the prototypes become the real product as functionality gets added.

• Agile, iterative, pragmatic development.

• Interoperability through Data model conventions: • Rails naming conventions • Codes tables – Business Rules (Rules Engine) • Attribute Tables for optional and perhaps multiply-occurring

data items • Trees and Lists

• Module Interfaces or Modular Interoperability • Web services – REST vs. SOAP, JSON vs. XML

• Where tighter, more complex interactions are

needed or performance is an issue, more direct interactions must be provided for. API Design becomes important from the beginning?

• Balance between Converging Business Practices vs. Flexibility in Configuring for Divergent Business Practices

• Easily Extended – Source code has to be readily available, understandable and modifiable.

Student Systems are Strategic to the mission of every institution – Better said, some aspect or component of your student

system will be directly related to the mission of your institution. You will need to modify those components to meet your mission.

• Environmental interoperability

• HR including Dependents (PeopleSoft)

• Finance (PeopleSoft)

• Student Accounts (PeopleSoft)

• Student System (AIM – Home Grown)

• Alumni

• Black Board or Course Management

• Campus IP Television

• CashNet

• Continuing Education – Conferences &

Workshops, Independent Study

• Counseling & Career Center

• Emergency Alert

• Employee training

• Facility access, locks and gates

• Faculty Services

• Financial Aid (PeopleSoft)

• Grade Book

• Graduate Studies – Apply Yourself

• Group Membership & Administration

• Honor Code

• ID and Signature Cards

• International Studies

• International Travel Registry

• Internships

• Library patronage

• Locker Rental

• Notification Engine

• On Campus Housing

• Off Campus Housing

• Payment Gateway

• Parking Permits

• Parking Citation and Appeal

• Service Desk & Incident

Management

• Software Distribution

• Testing Services

• Travel

• University Police

• Bus Passes

• …

Identity – Person Info:

Identity Merge Process

Merge Subscriber

Person System

Student System

HR System

Person Merge

• Tools and platform interoperability • Java, J2EE (JSP), JVM • Spring MVC, Hibernate, • AJAX – DWR (Direct Web Remoting) • SCALA • Ruby & Rails • JQuery

Is There Room? YES. It is just a matter of will.

Do we have the will?