Project MAUI Glossary
Academic Structure - Is a logically ordered system that captures the natural relationships between the various academic entities of the University. Academic Structure is best described as a tree structure that captures the University's academic organization and classifies the University's academic programs.
AD ASTRA - Schedule is a Room Scheduling and Event Management software that is used by the Registrar's Office to schedule room utilization for all general purpose classrooms across campus. It has a bulk room optimizer that simultaneously assigns best fit meeting times and best fit rooms maximizing classroom space utilization. Further information about room scheduling at the University of Iowa can be obtained at http://www.registrar.uiowa.edu/room_scheduling/ or for more information about the product at http://www.aais.com/astra_schedule.html .
Apache - is an open source web server. http://httpd.apache.org/
API - Application Programming Interface - a series of functions that programs can use to communicate with the operating system or other applications.
Beta Test Partner - "Beta" is a term used in the information technology world to indicate a version of a product which is in final testing stages and is not quite ready for the production environment. Iowa is planning to be a Beta Test Partner with Miami University in their development of the DARwin 4.0 java version. As such, we will be required to execute many of our degree evaluations against their new evaluation engine to ensure no functionality has been lost. (See "DARwin", "DARwin 4.0 release" and DELI for further definitions.)
CRUD - An abbreviation (Create, Read, Update and Delete) representing the standard operations that are performed on database records.
DARwin - is the latest and greatest version of Miami University's DARS software. We implemented the DARS software in the fall of 1990 to provide Degree Evaluations at the University of Iowa. This software "engine" on the mainframe accepts input from our current student information datastores and creates the UI Degree Evaluation (DELI) for viewing on ISIS. Upgrading to DARwin, the newer windows-versioned administrative client, provides us with the all the improvements Miami staff have made since we last upgraded in 1995. Upgrading also provides us with more "Transfer Course Articulation" functionality than currently exists in our own transfer course equivalency system. Most students, faculty, and advisors will only see the user interface improvements provided via the ISIS and OSIRIS web displays. We expect to provide point-and-click expanding and collapsing of requirements allowing users to focus on those items which remain to be completed as a student makes progress toward completing his or her degree.
DARwin 4.0 release - is the latest and greatest version of DARwin which is the first version of the DARS "black box" evaluation "engine" to be written in the java programming language. This is the release we are reliant upon in our implementation plan. Past releases of the DARS product have been either PL/1 (which is the version we use for DELI) or in COBOL. Because of our staff expertise with java, we have chosen to implement the 4.0 release instead of an earlier COBOL version.
DCE - Division of Continuing Education
DELI - is also known as the Degree Evaluation at Iowa. This is the mainframe version of the Miami University DARS software which students and advisers began using in the fall of 1990. During Project MAUI, DELI will be replaced by DARwin.
DW - Data Warehouse - is a central repository for significant institutional data. Data from various enterprise applications is extracted, transformed and loaded into the data warehouse for use by analytical applications and user queries.
Enterprise Information Architecture - suite of guidelines and system design patterns employed when implementing new IT capability.
Executive Sponsors - are champions of the project to the University of Iowa community, have the authority to resolve project issues, assign resources, and to recommend or approve project expenditures, plans, and organization. They are responsible for the overall success of the project implementation and its continued operation.
Executive Steering Committee - is responsible for Institutional project guidance, vision, and communication. They provide institutional-wide perspective for the implementation project, resolve any policy issues, review project progress and budget. Be strong advocates for the project. The committee collectively decides major project objectives, schedules, and priorities. The committee is responsible for the overall project success and for ensuring that the project meets the business requirements for function, cost, quality, and schedule. The committee is responsible for setting priorities, expediting decision making, and policy recommendations with campus constituents.
FARM - Financial Aid Resource Management System. The FARM System handles the processing chores for the Office of Student Financial. It is a "home grown" system and has been in operation since the 1985-86 academic year. In 1995 the LOAN system was added for processing of our Direct Loan operation.
FERPA - Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act - is federal legislation providing guidelines for the handling, storage and release of student data. The legislation provides for the protection of a students right to privacy by specifying rules about public disclosure of student academic records and the right of a student to inspect all of their educational records and seek to amend those they deem inaccurate.
GIS - Guided Independent Study
Hub - is a term used to represent a collection of database tables relating to a specific theme. For example, the "master hub" represents those tables containing the attributes as they relate to a person or organization in MAUI. Master attributes are things like names, addresses and phone numbers. The "session hub" represents those tables related to the academic session. Elements in the session hub are description, sort order and the various dates associated with an academic session.
HTML - Hypertext Markup Language - a collection of commands (tags) that create hypertext documents that can be interpreted and rendered by web browsers.
ICON - the course management system at The University of Iowa. It is based on the Desire2Learn platform.
Infobank - is a web-based portal which provides faculty and staff self-service access to populations of student information ranging from classlists to major lists to degree information. The data is refreshed once a day in a 5:30AM-8AM download of the student data. Access to the portal is contingent on completion of FERPA training and approval of a Dean or academic DEO.
Inspector page - A common user interface that brings together many different "tabs" of information and collects them under a single interface. An example would be the redesigned Osiris student records interface.
ISIS - see portal ...
Institution Hub - is the portion of the database model relating to academic institutions, both secondary (high schools, boarding schools, academies) and post-secondary (colleges, universities, technical schools, community colleges) institutions. This hub replaces the HSCS "system" from the mainframe and expands greatly on the data previously stored there and on shadow systems within various entities of the Office of Admissions.
Integration Engine - the infrastructure for linking disparate systems, applications and data sources. They transform the source data in a useable form for the target system.
Java - According to its creator, Sun Microsystems', Java is a programming language that is "simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture-neutral, portable, high-performance, multi-threaded, dynamic, buzzword-compliant, general-purpose programming language." http://java.sun.com/
JDBC - Java database connectivity. This set of application program interfaces that provide a standard mechanism to allow Java applications access to a database. http://java.sun.com/products/jdbc/
JMS - Java Message Service - is an API that provides reliable, asynchronous communication between applications in a distributed computing environment. http://java.sun.com/products/jms/
JSP - Java Server Pages - is a J2EE technology that provides a simplified, fast way to create web pages that display dynamically-generated content. http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/
J2EE - Java 2 Enterprise Edition - defines the standard, provides the framework and APIsfor developing multitier enterprise applications using Java. http://java.sun.com/j2ee/
LDAP - Lightweight Directory Access Protocol - LDAP provides a simple protocol that allows applications to access and search disparate directories over the Internet.
MADD - (MAJOR DEPARTMENT and DEGREE) - refers to a multifunctional mainframe file that stores data on all University academic units. It identifies department numbers and names, if majors are offered, degrees offered, degree titles, certificates, CIPS codes, course offering status, budget department number, and colleges associated with the department/major.
MAUI - is an acronym for Made At University of Iowa. Project MAUI is the new student information system implementation project that will replace our various existing systems within the administrative offices of the Provost units.
MARS - is the current web-based system which assesses student Tuition and Fees, accepts Financial Aid awards and applies same to assessed fees, accepts charges for student/staff bills from many University departments, prepares and disperses the University bill on a monthly basis and accepts payments to be applied to the bill. All of the MARS web pages and database structured will eventually be re-engineered to be consistent with the rest of the project architecture. The MARS nightly processing is currently executed on the mainframe and will also be re-written to be consistent with the rest of the project architecture.
MOM - Message Oriented Middleware - is a specific call of middleware that allows "message" exchange between applications in a distributed environment. Messages can contain data, request or both.
NAMS - A legacy application that manages the university central name and address database.
OLTP - Online Transaction Processing - a class of databases that facilitates and manages transaction-oriented applications.
ODS - Operational Data Store - is a type of database often used as an interim to the data warehouse for reporting purposes. An ODS is designed to perform relatively simple queries on small amounts of data, rather than the complex queries on large amounts of data typical of the data warehouse.
OLAP - Online Analytical Processing - is a class of applications that facilitates data mining or the discovery of trends and relationships in data.
OSIRIS - See portal ...
Portal - a web site that aggregates a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines, self-service and business transactions.
Portlets - are specialized pluggable modules that are designed to allow applications to execute inside a portal server.
Poseidon - The internal database in the Center for Credit Programs. Currently under revision.
PLT - is an acronym for Project Leadership Team. The Project Leadership Team is responsible for planning, executing, and coordinating the implementation and deployment of the system. They oversee the implementation of all modules and components and are responsible for project planning and management, implementation strategies, communications/coordination among project participants and campus, and guidance in the design, development, and deployment of the software.
RSS Channels Rich Site Summary Channels - a container for a collection of related items. RSS Channels are typically used to enable Web publishers to provide a summary of their site in a standard XML format. Channels will normally include news or spotlight items, but they can include links to any content at your site or other sites.
Servlets - a J2EE technology that provides Web developers with a simple, consistent mechanism for extending the functionality of a Web server and for accessing existing business systems.
SIS - is an acronym for Student Information System.
Sockets - a very low level point-to-point communication protocol.
SQL - Structure Query Language - A type of programming language used to construct database queries, perform updates, and other maintenance of relational databases.
Steering Committee - see Executive Steering Committee.
STUDY - The legacy mainframe system used to manage all aspects of GIS (Guided Independent Study) including enrolling students, paying instructors, and tracking lessons and exams, as well as the scheduling of exams.
Tomcat - is an open source web application server that supports J2EE Servlets, JSP technologies and APIs. http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/index.html
Web-based - refers to a generation of applications that are accessed with a web browser over the internet.
Web Services - a standards based suite of technologies (XML, SOAP, WSDL, UDDI) designed to support interoperable applications to application interactions over a network.
XML - Extensible Markup Language - is a meta-language for defining and creating specialized markup languages. These create portable data interchange formats that can be used to transmit data between applications.