Appeon helps Hung Kuang University respond to school affairs changes quickly

Background

Hung Kuang University of Technology (hereinafter referred to as Hung Kuang for short), founded 38 years ago, has undergone strypped-downs from a junior college to an institute of technology then to a university. Since 1997, Hung Kuang itself has developed five core modules (teaching affairs, study affairs, environment, human resource, accountant) of school administration system. Changes to the administration process are brought by the two great strypped-downs, and enrollment and recruitment processes are also becoming more complex because of the multiform enrollment project. Such situation pushes Hung Kuang to look for an information system development environment with more flexibility and efficiency, so that Hung Kuang can respond the administration process changes more quickly and provide a more convenient information system environment to staff and students.

Rapidly increased school affairs volume requires immediate information system upgrade

Along with the increase of school affairs volume and teaching service, the loading of information system reaches its peak each time when a semester starts. Gao Shiqin, the director of Hung Kuang Computer Center, said,”We have to cope with the online course-selection demands of 12,000 students in a week. According to previous experience, each student will need to log in/out the system for 20 to 30 times during this period, that is to say, in rush hours, the system has to handle the load of 1,000 students per hour.”

Facing such operations that demand a high-loading information system, Hung Kuang does not have a corresponding manpower increase, so how to flexibly and efficiently use new technology to maximize the productivity of manpower becomes a critical task of Hung Kuang. Mr. Gao said,” In the school affairs information system, one single change in business logic always affects more than one program tool and different user interfaces. It is very difficult for our IT staff to find out all affected places and make changes in a very short time, and also a very challenging task for us to flexibly arrange staff with different techniques.

Appeon for PowerBuilder offers quick development and web server flexibility

Facing such a tough situation, the Computer Center of Hung Kuang is looking for a single integrated information program tool. Mr. Gao said,” We expect the introduction of new development platform to be easy and fast, without needing to spend a lot of time on training. It is better to possess the quick development features of traditional development tools like Delphi and Visual Basic, and meanwhile can automatically support or provide an easy means to support Web environment."

After careful evaluation, Hung Kung chooses three-tiers architecture as the new development architecture for the school affairs administration system. In this new architecture, Sybase Appeon for PowerBuilder, in place of Delphi, Visual Basic and PHP development tools, is adopted as the new development platform. This brand new integrated development environment provides Hung Kuang an integrated user operation interface which possess Portal alike functions such as defining roles with different permissions, so that all roles of users such as teachers, students, staff and directors can use one integrated system.

Web–based system facilitates the usage and improves work efficiency

Ke Shenyao, the leader of the New Solution Development Team of Computer Center, analyzed that there are three factors that make their team reach an agreement immediately and choose the development and migration of the new system as mentioned above. Firstly, Appeon for PowerBuilder is very easy to learn and use, even an engineer without PowerBuilder developing experience can grasp it via a two-month training. Secondly, since application has converted from the client/server architecture to Web-based, it eliminates the needs of any installation and configuration on certain computer. Thirdly, the system can be accessed anywhere once Internet is available, on the other hand, the application layer that can be developed becomes more flexible and diversified. Mr. Ke also pointed out,”The observation records in half a year since we started using Sybase Appeon for PowerBuilder development tool also shows that the database can attain its previous efficiency by using only 10% of the previous connections.

The brand new Web information environment accelerates the organization’s electronic process, enables us to maximize our productivity and focus on more valuable work. For example, some data, which had to be checked by manpower in the past, can now be filtered by the system, this is a great reduce of workload to the staff.” Mr. Gao concluded,”The new system is highly integrated, owns a comprehensive development solution and easy to debug. These features help us respond school affairs changes more quickly, and increase user satisfaction.”