Internet Tools Access Administrative Data Copyright CAUSE 1994. This paper was presented at the 1994 CAUSE Annual Conference held in Orlando, FL, November 29- December 2, and is part of the conference proceedings published by CAUSE. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, that the CAUSE copyright notice and the title and authors of the publication and its date appear, and that notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To copy or disseminate otherwise, or to republish in any form, requires written permission from CAUSE. For further information: CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301; 303-449-4430; e-mail info@cause.colorado.edu INTERNET TOOLS ACCESS ADMINISTRATIVE DATA Carl Jacobson University of Delaware Newark, Delaware The University of Delaware provides widespread accessto its administrative systems, delivering improvedcustomer service to students, faculty and staff. The Internet's free, public, outreach tools (Gopher and Mosaic) have been merged with the institution's closed, proprietary administrative systems (student records and human resources). Private, personal information, including student and personnel records, is integrated with the public, general information of the campus-wide information system. Freely distributed clients for DOS, Windows, MAC and Unix workstations allow access to official, production data from both MVS and Unix platforms. The methods employed to achieve this success are simple, inexpensive and easily adapted. ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEMS AND CUSTOMER SERVICE While the administrative systems of the University can becharacterized as closed, proprietary, private, controlled andsecure, the student's view of computing is open, pedestrian, public and wide-reaching. In keeping pace with trends toward increasingly student- centered service, Delaware's administrative systems have been reworked toplace an emphasis on self-service. Self-service technologies have been applied to deliver integrated information services directly to the customers in a timely manner. These technologies empower the customer and provide cost-effective, automated services that know no geographic bounds. THE ROLE OF THE CLIENT-SERVER MODEL With a healthy portfolio of existing mainframe-based administrative systems, Delaware chose to adapt existing information resources to open network technologies in order to meet the goals of improved customer service. It is impossible to grant the large, expanding customer base direct access to these mainframe-based information systems. Faculty and research users of "academic" machines have little desire to log on to "administrative" machines and navigate through unfamiliar territory in search of needed information. Nor can 22,000 students be allowed to log on to the mainframe to review grades on the day they are posted. Closed, proprietary systems must be opened to allow such "pedestrian" use. Administrative information services must be adapted to behave more along the lines of publicly available campus-wide information systems (CWIS). To meet these goals, Delaware chose to leverage existing resources by merging-the established, closed, proprietary mainframe-based administrative systems with -the emerging, open, public, client-server based campus-wide information systems, in order to -deliver customer services in the environment of the customer, -do "administrative things" in "the student way", -allow the free, public access tools of the Internet to be used to do official university business. The key to successfully merging these technologies is"compromise". It is necessary to bring the security of theadministrative environment to Internet tools, while opening the administrative systems to Internet protocols. At Delaware, official institutional data is maintained usingSoftware AG's ADABAS database management system and processed by programs written in COBOL and Natural (a programming language), while CWIS information is collected, maintained and delivered using Gopher and World-Wide Web (WWW). Gopher and Mosaic use is widespread among our campus customers, while our Natural/ADABAS systems are robust and useful. These resources have been combined in a unique way to quickly deliver improved information services to student, staff and faculty. Transforming the "host" of a host-terminal system into the"server" of a client-server system allows the application of technologies geared to improving customer service. The host and its associated applications becomes part of a client-server network enabling outreach and supporting diverse data types. OPENING CLOSED SYSTEMS The client-server model of computing makes the opening of such closed systems a simple task. The work required focuses on the need to create a "server" that speaks an open protocol on the user side (Gopher protocol in this case) and understands and interprets the proprietary administrative systems on the database side (ADABAS, Natural, and COBOL). Gopher and Mosaic clients recognize such a server as a Gopher service while the ADABAS DBMS speaks to such a server using existing COBOL or Natural programs. With Gopher and Mosaic clients already in the hands of students, faculty and staff, the issues of training, support and software distribution are minimized. Student grades and transcripts may be accessed in a manner familiar to all existing Gopher and Mosaic users allowing students to use these tools to conduct institutional business as well as to explore academic frontiers. Since these tools are free and widespread, client-side costs were kept to a minimum. However, in order to provide the levels of security needed in conducting personal business, authentication routines need to be added to these tools. At Delaware, this was first done by adding an encrypted authentication scheme to Gopher clients. AUTHENTICATION AND AUTHORIZATION With an overall design goal of "using existing resources whenever possible", SSN/PIN authentication and authorization schemes used for touch-tone registration were enlisted to provide similar security to the Internet clients. PINS (Personal Identification Numbers) were already known and used by students and staff. PIN-based authorization tables were already in place in administrative systems. Therefore, Gopher clients were modified to prompt for SSN and PIN. These values were encrypted and appended to standard Gopher packets to be unpackaged and handled by server-side authorization routines. Of course, this approach requires that Gopher source code be available. At the time of this phase in development, there were very few Gopher clients, Mosaic was unavailable, and Gopher source code was fairly easy to come by. Since that time, the construction of Internet "browsers" has become a growth industry and there are now many Gopher and Mosaic clients to choose from, and source code has become hard to come by. In keeping with the spirit of "doing it the student way", it is important to provide access to users of any Gopher or Mosaic client, on any platform. To meet this goal, a second version of the client was developed with the SSN/PIN authentication and encryption routines "externalized" and packaged as a MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions) viewer. This viewer was written using a cross-platform development tool to allow one piece of source code to be the basis for viewers for DOS, Windows, Mac an Unix users. In this way, users of any MIME compliant Gopher or Mosaic clients may define the University of Delaware SSN/PIN viewer, called "You-View" to handle any requests requiring University of Delaware authentication. The current authentication scheme uses a single key encryption algorithm and includes the encryption of the Internet station address to guard against the rebroadcast of clandestine packets. With the implementation of a campus-wide Kerberos authentication service, its expected that Kerberos will eventually replace and improve this current scheme. While the SSN/PIN "key" is protected using encryption, all text is returned in unencrypted format. As the popularity of "You-View" continues to grow, plans are underway to eventually "garble" this text using DES (Data Encryption Security) encryption to add an additional level of security to the entire process. The use of Gopher ASK blocks and Mosaic forms to prompt for SSN and PIN was considered during development of "You-View". At this writing the results of either method are transported across the network in unencrypted formats and key encryption is required on our campus. However, with the development of secured Mosaic and Gopher clients for business and commerce comes the possibility of using off-the-shelf Gopher and Mosaic clients to provide secure, encrypted authentication. These developments hold great hope for the future, when Internet tools will be routinely applied to deliver campus business services. SERVERS PROVIDE SERVICE On the service side, it is necessary to translate Internet protocols into the languages of our administrative systems and databases... to provide a bridge between the Internet protocols of gopher, WWW and email and the administrative 3GLs, 4Gls and DBMSs. With administrative systems residing in an MVS mainframe environment, it was necessary to write a "server" to run in this environment, accept IP packets, recognize Gopher protocol, and call administrative application programs based on the content of these Gopher packets. Gopher and Mosaic can routinely display directories and text. Application programs already existed on the mainframe to produce transcripts, grade reports and schedules as text reports. Instead of printing these reports, the server needs only to package them as Gopher replies and send them back out onto the IP network. Again, this effort was completed before the advent of Mosaic, so that text is packaged in Gopher format. Currently there is no need to hyper-link items in the student or personnel reports, so these documents have not converted to the HTML (HyperText,Markup Language) format used by Mosaic. Unlinked documents allow all text to continue to be used by both Gopher and Mosaic clients. However, the generation of HTML documents is appealing and would be useful in developing applications such as Internet-based Executive Information Systems (EIS). A mainframe-based HTML server has been developed at Delaware as a "proof-of-concept" trial, generating hyperlinked management reports that are delivered via MIME-compliant email. This would allow university management to receive regularly generated summary reports with built-in "drill- down" capabilities and links to official, production data from live administrative databases or links to more diverse data-types such as photographic or document images. STATELESS CLIENT-SERVER RELATIONSHIPS A significant advantage to adopting a Gopher-like server to provide student services lies in the "statelessness" of Gopher and WWW servers. The transactions may be viewed as "stateless" in that a server has no lasting connection with each requesting client. The server "comes alive" upon receiving a request message across the network, interprets and fulfills the request by passing a message back across the network and returns to a "wait state" until the next user request comes along. Students do not log on to the administrative system, there is no datacommunications overhead. A single started task monitors an Internet port and responds to customer requests. This "stateless" client-server relationship allows many customers to effectively use administrative resources without becoming members of that environment. Without the overhead of CICS or TSO sessions the server performs its simple tasks with little impact to the overall system. Response is immediate, even for longer packages, such as transcripts. In addition, due to the nature of the current breed of Internet tools, the response time expectations of Gopher and Mosaic users are lower than those of interactive transaction- based systems, so that if a delay is encountered it is unremarkable. Besides the great advantage of using existing programs to produce grades and transcripts and schedules, this "interpretive server" has the advantage of accessing production data directly. It does not rely on data extracts but instead returns timely and accurate information from the official, production records of the institution. As students perform touch-tone drop-add, they can immediately confirm schedule changes. As students pay bills, they can quickly print summaries of charges and payments. With many business transactions reaching the database in real time, it has become necessary to report the changes in real time. "Just- in-time" production of course schedules and transcripts calls for this level of timeliness. The stateless, interpretive server allows this to be accomplished easily and inexpensively. With interpretive servers speaking to administrative programs, existing tasks, such as transcript production, can be reused rather than re-developed. Upon request from a student client, the server simply invokes the existing COBOL transcript program, however, instead of printing or displaying the results, they are packaged in a Gopher packet and sent it out onto the network. Servers have been written to run on both MVS and Unix platforms to allow information to be gleaned from various databases across campus and to take advantage of the relative merits of both operating systems. THE CUSTOMER IS THE CLIENT At Delaware the "You-View" client was deployed as a "self- service" technology. It was first made available at character-based, public kiosks, then to public computing sites, labs and libraries. After all residence halls were wired the same client programs used to deliver services to these sites were used to delivery services to individual students in their rooms. For some time only these "stateless", workstation clients could be used for personal access to student and personnel information. The clients running on central time-share systems were not enabled with the SSN/PIN authentication. This was done to allow the stateless clients to gain a foothold in the network and to avoid the possibility of 22,000 students logging onto a timeshare system the day the grades are posted. Now that the clients have been established, the Unix-version of "You-View" will be placed on a central cluster of time- share machines heavily used by students. This will allow increased access to all "You-View" student services. TOUCH-SCREEN, MULTI-MEDIA KIOSKS Public access workstations at many locations across campus, including all public computing labs, computing classrooms, business service centers, libraries and residence hall lounges, provide access for those who do not have their own workstation or network connection. A multi-media authoring tool developed by a University of Delaware professor, has been made "Internet aware" allowing it to speak Gopher protocol. This tool, originally targeted as a classroom technology, is now used to develop compelling, multi- media, touch-screen kiosk applications; merging images, sound and video with administrative information. This object-oriented toolset allows kiosks to be built quickly and inexpensively using existing Internet resources. Thus, the "dusty old" COBOL transcript program is given new life, delivering up- to-date transcripts to users of DOS, Windows, Mac and Unix workstations, Unix dial-in and network users, as well as to customers of self-service touch-screen kiosks located on campus. SOFTWARE DISTRIBUTION One advantage of the client-server model of computing is the increased functionality provided at the desktop. Not only can Internet browsers retrieve grades and course schedules, but they can also retrieve and display images, sounds, and even brief video clips. Any "digital object" of reasonable size can be delivered to any client workstation. This includes the delivery of client software itself. In keeping with the goal of "self-service", Delaware's Internet client software is stored on a Gopher server and made available to anyone in the campus community across the network from Gopher or Mosaic pages. A simple point-and-click causes the newest version of a program to be loaded, across the network, to the user's hard drive. UPDATES Delaware's electronic forms system is available as a MIME "viewer" enabling protected-field forms to be delivered to Gopher or Mosaic clients. This allows functions such as "change of address" to be performed under the protection of SSN/PIN authentication. The forms application provides automated control of the document routing and approval process and allows users of any campus mail system, on any operating platform to participate as "submitters" or "approvers". SUMMARY The interest of the Clinton/Gore administration in a National Information Infrastructure, coupled with the emergence of compelling Internet applications such as Gopher and Mosaic, has contributed to the recent explosive growth of the Internet. Advances in the tools of the national network will impact the processes of teaching, learning and research on our campuses. Many of these same advances will contribute to the way we conduct business and affect daily campus life for students, employees and visitors. By combining current tools and technologies, existing resources can be re-used effectively to return immediate benefits against small investments. Early adopters of these technologies and methods will gain valuable experience and insight into the issues of delivering networked services and will establish a foundation for controlled growth and change. As administrators on the Information Super Highway, we will need to move quickly and carry little baggage. From this point on, there will be few rest stops, and little time for planning long journeys. As explorers on the old frontiers of our country had little idea what was in store for them as they journeyed west, we cannot predict the events on the information frontier well enough to lay complex and concrete plans. We cannot contribute to any plan, until we simply begin the journey. To achieve business and academic advantage, we cannot delay in identifying and applying the emerging technologies of networked information. -Technologies that recognize the changing nature of proprietary systems, and acknowledge the role of openness in the future success of our networked campuses. -Technologies that depend on the client-server model of computing to coordinate the deluge of dispersed information events across these networked campuses. -Technologies that fundamentally change the way we conduct business, our approach to the educational process, and daily campus life. -Technologies that allow continued improvement of service; enabling the re-engineering of business processes, facilitating client outreach and self-service, advancing teaching and research, and enriching campus life. (11/10/94 CWJ)