IV: Determining Business and Technology Requirements
Appendix B: Glossary of Terms and Concepts
Analytical processing/online analytical processing
This term was coined by relational database pioneer Dr. E. Codd to describe activities performed on data that are analytical in nature, as distinct from operational or transactional in nature. Analytical processing is also referred to as online analytical processing (OLAP), and operational or transaction processing is also referred to as online transaction processing (OLTP). Contemporary thinking suggests that improvements in computer system efficiency and functionality are achieved by separating analytical processing from transaction processing activities. This is because (1) such systems use different underlying technologies (hardware and software) that are optimized respectively for either transactions or decision support and analysis; (2) software tools to support analysis functions typically evolve faster than those that support transaction processing, so separating such functions allows their users to assimilate changing technology more cost effectively; and (3) data in transaction systems are frequently difficult for end users to work with and are rarely historical, suggesting the desirability of developing different data management approaches (see, for example, data warehouse) for the purposes of management analysis and reporting. A wide variety of software tools have been developed to support analytical processing. Such tools include statistical packages, spreadsheets, report generators, graphical packages, relational databases, and multi-dimensional databases.
Client/server technology
Client/server technology represents a major milestone in the migration of data processing from centralized, host-based computing systems to distributed, networked computing. Client/server technology is based on a software partitioning paradigm in which a distributed system (which could also be portions of a central system) is split between one or more server tasks. The server is usually a networked computer providing service to multiple clients, typically desktop computers in end-user departments.
The goal in dividing these tasks is to create a balance of appropriate work on both the client and server computers, while minimizing network traffic. Client/server technology provides opportunities for increased flexibility in responding to user requirements by taking advantage of low-cost hardware technology, combined with network infrastructures and advanced application development and database management tools. Implementation of the client/server technology may increase the responsibility of end-user departments for the data processing operations, procedures, security, recovery, and maintenance of the resulting systems.
System development for client/server technology is more sophisticated than system development in the centralized or distributed computing environment. Client/server is not a single technology. Its implementation will vary based on many design factors involving hardware, software, application development tools, and the sophistication of end users and technical development organizations. Systems development can also involve business process reengineering, where the application will be redesigned to take advantage of process improvement and quality management inputs.
While client/server systems connote distribution to the division or department level, the design of such systems needs to be based on an institutional information architecture and infrastructure, since client/server systems need to coexist with other systems. The tasks that will be distributed to the client and server environment are the tasks typically contained within the traditional central data processing functions -- presentations (screens, graphical user interfaces), the processes (the application tasks such as "compute balance" or "calculate federal tax"), and the database. The database, while operating in a particular client/server environment, needs to be available at the institutional level. The extent to which these tasks will be distributed to the server or client platforms will be determined by the design of the particular system.
Current developments in the client/server arena are dependent on an institution's internal network structures and resources ("intranet"). Future developments may include use of external network structures and resources (such as the Internet) to deliver typical server functions to client platforms.
Data mapping
Data mapping is the process of aligning data elements in one database structure with the data elements in a different database structure and resolving possible conflicts in the definitions and content of those elements. Data mapping is a significant implementation issue when migrating or transferring data from one database system to another (for example, from a nonrelational legacy system to a relational database system).
Data elements in the two databases may appear to be the same data, but may in fact have a different meaning or connotation. Fields such as Cumulative GPA or Student Account Balance may have the same description, but contain different information. Resolution can involve review of the application code that creates the data to determine if the elements are the same. This issue needs to be dealt with in the implementation of any new system solutions, whether building or buying, when the new database structures are different from the old ones.
Data warehouse
Increased emphasis on information access for decision-making purposes and the availability of low-cost, high-speed technology has permitted the creation of databases that can be used for query purposes or for browsing while resolving the traditional issues of impact on the day-to-day performance of the main systems.
Data are extracted from the main database on a periodic basis and are available in the "data warehouse" for use in decision support and executive support systems.
Tools that access a data warehouse are usually more flexible and intuitive than interfaces to legacy systems and thus simplify access to and retrieval of information by nontechnical personnel. Campus financial information organized by funding sources, by departments, or by expenditure categories are examples of data warehouse applications. The data warehouse may represent the total institutional database or may contain a subset (data mart) designed for use by a specific functional area. The value of the data warehouse is directly related to the availability and use of query tools. (See query languages.)
Distributed Computing Environment (DCE)
The Open Software Foundation (OSF), a consortium of major hardware and software vendors, has recognized the value of building distributed computing environments on open standards and, toward this end, has established the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE). DCE technology is a collection of middleware services or "enabling technology" that can aid the deployment of heterogeneous, networked applications by providing for interoperability across heterogeneous systems. Included are such services as network security, user identification, authentication, and authorization; file services; and a common operating environment that allows institutions to share applications. According to the OSF, DCE is not intended to exist alone, but instead should be bundled into a vendor's operating system offering, or integrated in by a third-party vendor. DCE's security and distributed file system, for example, can completely replace current, non-network analogs. DCE is not an application, but is used to build applications or support purchased applications.
Distributed systems
Distributed systems are emerging as a result of the steep reduction in processor prices and the increased computing capability of these systems. Traditional mainframe, or centralized, approaches are being superseded by the "servers" that provide more power for less money than many traditional systems. Distributed systems can also have the connotation of "user" systems where the applications and processes are under the control of the user departments. This may or may not reflect the physical location of the servers. In many instances, the servers are centrally located, in the existing operations center, to provide consistency of services and system backups.
Document imaging technology
Document imaging technology addresses the increasing concerns of institutions for the storage and retrieval of large databases that are often stored and retrieved as physical paper documents. High-speed document scanning equipment and the availability of high-speed processing and large optical storage databases have provided significant potential for storage and retrieval over previous paper files or microfilming techniques. Databases are usually stored on servers. Advances in programming languages and search techniques provide faster and more efficient procedures for the capture and retrieval of stored data.
Enterprise data
Data that span the institution -- that is, data collected and used in support of the mission of the "enterprise" -- are often referred to as enterprise data. Examples include data in the campus general ledger, payroll system, human resource management systems, student information system, and purchasing system. Departments that capture enterprise data, taking responsibility for their accuracy and protection, are often called "data stewards,"while the institution is considered to be the owner of such data.
Financial standard-setting bodies
The phrase "generally accepted accounting principles" (GAAP) is a technical accounting term that encompasses the conventions, rules, and procedures necessary to define accepted accounting practice at a particular time. Several bodies are involved in setting standards for financial accounting practice. The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) was incorporated to operate exclusively for charitable, educational, scientific, and literary purposes under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. It has oversight responsibility for the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC), Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB), and Governmental Accounting Standard Advisory Council (GASAC); selects members of both boards and both advisory councils; and provides funds for the boards. The FASB was formed in 1973 to establish standards of financial accounting and reporting for all entities other than state and local governmental entities, including private higher education institutions. The GASB was formed in 1984 to establish standards of financial accounting and reporting for all state and local governmental entities, including public higher education institutions. The Cost Accounting Standards Board (CASB) is the federal regulatory body charged with developing cost allocation procedures for all federal contracts.
Information architecture
The way the components of an institution's information resources fit together -- the design, planning, control, funding, and exploitation of those resources -- can be described as an information architecture. The term encompasses both the information itself and related aspects, such as the structure of how components of information relate to each other. Most information architectures include an enterprise-wide data model to help the institution understand what data are needed and how they map against institutional processes so that those processes can be supported by appropriate data.
Information managers are responsible for the coordination and integration of a wide range of information- handling activities within the organization. These include the formulation of corporate information policy, plans, standards, and design; evaluation and integration of effective information systems and services; the exploitation of information resources for competitive advantage; and the integration of internal and external information and data.
Information technology architecture
Information technology architecture describes the design, planning, control, funding, and exploitation of the investment in technology infrastructure. Over time, this architecture reflects advances in technology implemented by the institution and provides a model from which standards and products can be derived. Plans for use of these new technologies can be documented in a strategic planning document that identifies technologies to be used, policies and procedures for deployment, and the time frames within which these changes will occur.
The technology infrastructure is the set of hardware, software, communications, cable, and personnel that provides, maintains, and supports access to information, processing of transactions, and the standards for security and procedures related to information technology. Typical infrastructure includes mainframe and server hardware and operating systems, applications software, campus network backbone and associated equipment, telecommunications equipment, and desktop computers and terminals. Infrastructure services include the design, development, and implementation of systems; end-user support and help desk facilities; and central operations services.
As institutions migrate from central to distributed processing systems, the information technology architecture is modified to identify the responsibilities of the central or core institutional areas and the responsibilities within distributed areas such as colleges, divisions, and/or departments. The information technology architecture consolidates the institution's investments in technology. Standards established by the central group identify the roles and responsibilities of the distributed computing areas for access, data processing, operations, security, support, and other roles usually associated with a central group. With increased external access via the Internet (especially the World Wide Web platform), the technology interface between these functional areas is focusing more attention on security against external access or hacking.
Integrated databases
Integrated databases support the increased emphasis on access to "enterprise" data, which includes all mission-critical information within the institution. Access includes the ability to extract and produce reports as well as interact in real time with the data using query languages to produce relevant decision support information.
There has been significant progress towards integrated databases through advances in database technology, open systems architecture, and vendor development of applications that integrate data used across applications such as payroll and student information systems. These systems typically contain demographic and financial information on faculty and students that has been difficult to bring together without an integrated database.
The data do not need to reside in a single, physical location. However, the integrated database does need to be able to understand the relationships between files and data elements wherever they physically exist, and does need to eliminate, or reduce, duplicated or redundant data such as names and addresses and account balances. Duplicate or redundant data often imply duplicated data entry, which increases the opportunity for discrepancies to exist between data in different files.
Integration of software applications based on advanced database technology is a key concept. Most markets for new information technology are making integrated solutions a top priority, and vendors are responding to this demand. Some institutions are adopting a "best of breed" strategy of purchasing separate software modules from several different vendors, which makes integration of applications a necessary strategy. Most vendors are designing software so that their applications integrate easily with other vendor products. The choice of underlying database in a commercial product is important because it often limits the software that can be integrated with the financial applications.
Integrated databases can be created from the separate application databases from which they derive -- for example, by employing "design around" strategies. This means that the application processes are updating the primary database and periodically the data are integrated in a separate process that allows enterprise-wide data to be available using a different database "engine." So, proprietary operating systems with their own database supporting legacy systems can be accessed to create an integrated set of data that can be used at the enterprise level. This is not necessarily an overhead, since the total processing time for transactions and data integration, depending on the size of the database, may be less with the design-around strategy and save large investments in the redesign of applications. At best, the design-around approach provides time for more meaningful reengineering of business processes without the immediate commitment to the technological solution.
Legacy systems
Usually, but not always, this term is used to describe applications developed using proprietary operating systems and that will only run on the hardware of the owners of the proprietary operating system. IBM's MVS and Digital Equipment Corporation's VMS are examples of proprietary software that restrict hardware platforms of applications. This term may also be used to describe existing, installed systems which typically, but not always, run on proprietary systems.
Life-cycle budgeting/costing
This concept developed originally in the architecture and engineering disciplines to embody the total capital and operating costs of an investment in plant over a planned span of use. Life-cycle costing is particularly important in the context of technology acquisition and/or development activities owing to the relatively short life span of much hardware and software. A frequent and key "land mine" in many technology development projects is the failure of the project team and steering group to look beyond the basic purchase (or development) cost of hardware and software. In a life-cycle costing environment, these costs would be assessed, as would the ongoing costs of supporting the technical environment, including: hardware and network utilization costs; software acquisition, development, licensing, and maintenance costs; and training, help-desk, and other support costs. Increasingly, utility costs can play a major role in life-cycle costs of major information systems. In particular, thorough life-cycle costing exercises are critical where host-based systems are to be replaced with client/server systems. Planners must also account for the "opportunity costs" associated with reducing the utilization of the campus host computer in cases where hardware leases or purchases make it difficult or costly to downsize this hardware.
Middleware
Middleware refers to the software that mediates between an application program and a network. It manages the interaction between disparate applications across the heterogeneous computing platforms. (See Distributed Computing Environment.)
Networked environment
Many systems developments are taking place within networked environments. The networks tie together the central (proprietary or open) systems with distributed processing servers and user workstations through a campus backbone of cable. In a higher education environment, these networks often serve student workstations in the labs from servers located in central or distributed environments. Networks underscore the critical issues related to expanded access to information for faculty, staff, and students with a need to know. In the traditional data processing environment, information was considered to be departmental, and access was restricted to very few people. With the increased recognition of the knowledge worker and the need to share information, the focus is on expanding access to many more people. As the tools for the remote office continue to develop, access from off-campus locations will continue to grow, via standard telephone communications or other more effective means.
Object-oriented programming and design
The basic concept in this approach is that of an "object" which is a data structure (abstract data type) encapsulated with a set of routines, called "methods," that operate on the data. Operations on the data can only be performed via these methods, which are common to all objects that are instances of a particular "class." Thus the interface to objects is well defined, and allows the code implementing the methods to be changed so long as the interface remains the same. Object-oriented design is one of the stages of object-oriented programming. It is a method in which a system is modeled as a collection of cooperating objects, and individual objects are treated as instances of a class within a class hierarchy.
Open systems
These are systems that are built around open operating systems that are supported on multiple-vendor platforms. UNIX is the primary example of this technology. Although it may come in many flavors, such as IBM's AIX or Digital's VX, the basic operating system is supported on various hardware platforms. Several software vendors in the education arena provide applications software that is supported on various vendor platforms -- IBM, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, Sun, and so forth. In this case, the application vendors take care of any idiosyncrasies in the various flavors of the UNIX operating system.
Performance measurements
Performance measurements are a set of qualitative and quantitative metrics that identify key indicators (critical success factors) on which a system will be judged and selected. Performance criteria reflect the business and technical requirements and can include the application functionality required, the speed and response time of the system, the technology base preferred, and the support, training, and implementation needs of the institution. The ability to reach an objective judgment will be enhanced by documented selection criteria that focus on key areas and identify the relative priority of the various criteria.
Query languages
Query languages are the tools that allow users to access meaningful sets of data in an interactive manner, independent of predefined reports produced by standard operations processes. As the importance of the information database becomes more critical to the success of the enterprise, so does the capability of a query language to locate, extract, and combine data into meaningful information for decision-making or avoidance of risk. Query languages typically are developed for a specific database, and the efficiency of the database engine and the query language need to be considered together.
Relational databases
A relational database is a database based on the relational model developed by E.F. Codd. A relational database allows the definition of data structures, storage and retrieval operations, and integrity constraints. In such a database, the data and relations between them are organized in tables. A table is a collection of records, and each record in a table contains the same fields.
Certain fields may be designated as keys, which means that searches for specific values of that field will use indexing to speed them up. Records in different tables may be linked if they have the same value in one particular field in each table. Oracle and Sybase are well-known examples of relational databases products.
Responsibility center management
This resource allocation and financial accountability model has gained currency in several major U.S. research universities in the past 15 years. In this model, a university school, college, or major business unit is designated a responsibility center and is responsible for meeting negotiated net revenue objectives. Revenue is recognized from all sources such as direct and indirect sponsored research revenues, gifts and endowment income, and tuition and fees. Many universities using responsibility center management allocate the full costs of operations to the centers, including costs for space utilization, utilities, and even land. The theory of responsibility center management is that focusing the attention of revenue center managers (deans, directors) on net revenues creates behaviors that are both revenue-seeking and efficiency-seeking in cases where centers that generate surplus net revenues are allowed to retain the surplus. Deans, directors, and other revenue center managers who generate surplus net revenues are able, thus, to finance program growth. In units where revenues are insufficient to meet program costs, campus subventions and subsidies are made explicit. Such accounting makes it possible for campus leaders to make informed decisions about the economics of different academic programs and to grow or shrink such programs accordingly, in concert with other (non-economic) campus objectives.
Security systems and backup
Security systems and backup provide a set of standards, policies, and procedures designed to protect and restore the information assets of the institution and include appropriate physical control and security access of the hardware, software, databases, and processes, and the recovery procedures for partial or complete loss of these resources. Continuous availability and security of information, appropriate and timely backups, and disaster recovery plans need to be an integral part of the design, implementation, and maintenance of an information system.
In a central mainframe environment where the computers, programs, data files, and processes are centrally maintained, policies and procedures ensure recovery for various conditions ranging from the need to restore a file to more significant disaster situations.
In the networked environment, security systems and back up become much more complex. In a distributed computing environment, programs, data file updates, and application processes may be occurring anywhere on the physical network. There are dependencies on connections, cables, and intermediary servers to process transactions or respond to requests for information.
Increased access to integrated databases requires processes and procedures to ensure authorized access to information. Access to the network can take place anywhere, depending upon the capabilities of the network and communications systems. So security systems need to be designed into layers that allow validated access to the network and continuing validation of a person's right to navigate and access the information system. As the access to information becomes more important, so too does the ability to access the data on a 24-hour basis.
Shadow systems
Shadow systems are locally developed systems that duplicate and/or improve on functions or activities supported by core institutional information systems. Because many core systems are old, use antiquated and unfriendly technology, and were not designed to support analysis and ad hoc reporting, and as campus desktop computing environments have matured, many departmental personnel who depend on financial information have deployed sophisticated systems to provide departmental accounting and other services. These systems can essentially represent duplicate accounting books. While these systems go far in meeting local needs for information and function, they often generate substantial redundant workload and create often-significant data integrity and quality problems resulting in complicated month-end and year-end reconciliations with the institution's "book of record." Financial information systems that meet the needs of the most particular and sophisticated users of such information -- often the auxiliaries -- reduce the incentives to develop and support shadow systems.
Smart-card technology
A smart card refers to any plastic card (like a credit card) with an embedded integrated circuit for storing information. Smart cards are being incorporated into soldiers' dog-tags and used to store hospital patients' medical records. They are also being used as student/faculty/staff campus ID cards that can contain information on that individual. Other uses are as a form of token in a financial system; for example, the system can store on the card electronic money or credits towards campus food services. Some campuses are beginning to use these cards to store personnel information or for security access.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW) refers to the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers) that allow text, graphics, sound files, etc. to be mixed together and accessed via the Internet. The Web often points to the whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using tools such as Gopher, FTP, HTTP, Telnet, and Usenet. Many colleges and universities are beginning to use the Web as a front end (or interface) to their administrative systems, especially for students to access their information in legacy systems. Many institutions also use the Web for institutional forms, replacing traditional paper forms. For some institutions, using a Web platform is a good strategy for migrating legacy systems into a networked environment.
Endnote:
Some descriptions in this glossary were adapted from definitions found in The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/contents.html).
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