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Most software packages for managing the records of college
students haven't changed much in the past couple of decades.
They're oriented to the mainframe, and they typically handle
only a single administrative function - admissions, financial
aid, accounts, or general information such as grades. Employees
waste time copying data from one application to the other
to enter the student on all systems, and are forced to enter
multiple passwords as they move between applications.
Also, legacy higher-education software packages typically
don't offer a graphical user interface or an efficient way
for students to get at their own records.
Peat Marwick LLP, the U.S. division of the $7.5 billion international
"Big Six" accounting firm KPMG, saw an opportunity
to alleviate higher educationÕs administrative burdens,
put computing power in the hands of university staff, and
provide a host of new ways for students to stay informed about
their status.
Peat Marwick's technology and systems practice of its public
services division in Chicago is developing a multi-tier client/server
record-keeping software package called Performance Student.
It will give university staff and students easy access to
records, from a student's first inquiry about attending a
school through graduation and beyond. The company is using
Entegrity Solutions PC-DCE middleware to give it needed security,
multi-platform support, and the capacity to scale to thousands
of simultaneous users.
The Performance Student software will give users a unified
view of records from a single point of reference - a Windows-based
graphical user interface developed with PowerBuilder. Eventually,
users will be alternatively able to retrieve information through
a Web browser, telephone, or kiosk.
The software will unify many administrative functions, eliminating
multiple log-ons and the tedious re-entry of data between
applications. For example, a high school student might make
her first contact with a school by visiting its Web site and
entering her name and address to get more information in the
mail. No administrator or clerk will ever have to insert that
name and address again as the system follows the student through
admissions, orientation, freshman year, first semester grades,
and tuition payments. Twenty years after graduation, the initial
contact will help the school provide the student with transcripts
for a career change.
Given the "creatively hostile" environment on college
campuses - intelligent young adults with ample time, curiosity,
and access to the latest technology - security is of paramount
concern. Imagine the consequences if, for example, a student
hacked into the mainframe containing grades and tuition account
balances.
Security risk is a major reason why Peat Marwick chose Entegrity's
PC-DCE for the Performance Student application, to take advantage
of PC-DCE's fine-grained access control and strong mutual
authentication between clients and servers before servers
are authorized to transfer data or launch applications. PC-DCE,
which is based on The Open Group Distributed Computing Environment
(TOG DCE), also ensures data privacy and integrity.
In addition to security, PC-DCE offered Peat Marwick scalability
and multi-platform support. This enabled Performance Student
to let thousands of users seek on-line information from various
computer types, kiosks, telephones, and Web browsers simultaneously
from around the world - even at peak periods of the academic
year such as registration and graduation.
"We looked at other DCE-oriented products," said
Pat Casey, a principal at KPMG Peat Marwick LLP. "They
added a lot of their own custom software on top of DCE, and
we were concerned that would tie us to a single software package.
Entegrity provided the solution closest to an open-systems
DCE environment. With Entegrity, we still could implement
Performance Student in those other environments, but not be
tied to them. Simply put, PC-DCE gave us the broadest implementation
capability."
Entegrity's PC-DCE Product Family
Entegrity Solutions is the leading supplier of The Open
Group Distributed Computing Environment (TOG DCE) technology
for the desktop.
Entegrity provides DCE runtime services for a wide
variety of platforms including Windows 2003, Windows
XP, Windows 2000, Windows 2000 Terminal Server, Windows
NT 4.0 Workstation & Server (SP6a and above), Windows
NT Terminal Server, Windows 98, and Windows XP.
Entegrity also offers the DCE Distributed File System
(DFS), a system software service that enables computers
to share files within and across enterprises, on selected
platforms including Windows 2003, Windows XP, Windows
2000, Windows 2000 Terminal Server
Red Hat Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (ask about versions
for other Linux distributions), and Tru64 UNIX v4.0
and later.
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