Current DBMS Based Activities at NCST, Juhu

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Current DBMS Based Activities at NCST,
Juhu

• Sandhya Desai
• National Centre for Software Technology
• Juhu, Mumbai

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Objective

• Introduce the nature of activities at the centre
• Share our experience in developing applications
• Get new ideas and better solutions
• Possibilities for future Collaborations

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Present group members at NCST, Juhu

• Urjaswala Vora
• Gauri Rendalkar
• Lakshana Pant
• Amarish Choubal
• Vishal Mehrotra
• Satish Rane
• Sudhin Deshpande
• Sandhya Desai

• Salim Sayyed
• Amit Vaidya

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Projects Under progress

• Computerization of Mumbai University Exam centre.
• MTNL Directory Service.
• TIFR Payroll.
• Supporting NCST office functions.
• Advanced PGDST DBMS module
• Database design review for TEC

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Research Interests

• Data Warehousing
• System Architecture
• Internet and databases
• Workflow systems

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MTNL- Web dictionary Service

• Started as prototype for Mumbai node
• Dictionary services
• Delivered operational system
• at Both Delhi and Mumbai
• URL mumbaihelp1.mtnl.net.in
• URL delhihelp1.mtnl.net.in

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System Configuration

• Oracle 8 on Unix server
• Java application server on Windows NT
• Web browsers on clients

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Application Server

• Coded in Java
• Manages pool of connections to Oracle
• Uses threads to serve each request
• parses client requests and formulates equivalent
  SQL query
• Formats result set creating dynamic HTML pages

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Issues

• Performance
• security
• Usage log
• 50hits/min, 20,000 hits on first day
• extensions to the dictionary service

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Mumbai University project

• SRS document
• proposed duration one year
• team of 6 members

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System Profile

• Complex requirements of exam centre
• around 1,50,000 students every year
• around 600 exams with time varying structure,
  revised exams
• around 15,000 examiners
• around 10,000 papers and, revised papers
• around 150 colleges
• around 150 degrees, diplomas, certificates

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Customer Profile

• Distributed
• No centralized authority
• Not very demanding
• Not too committed to project
• Overloaded with operations

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System Configuration

• SQLserver
• Powerbuilder for client software
• Power Designer
• Windows NT server

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Design Issues

• Analysis of exam patterns
• Complexities in exam schemas
• Difficult to get complete domain knowledge
• Work flow understanding
• Tracking the actions
• Reengineering

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What we learnt?

• Trivial things are not at all trivial
• report formats
• identifiers
• data entry forms and formats
• collation of data
• verifying the data
• checking consistency of data

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At Cross Roads

• Software engineering
• Quality Assurance
• Project management

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Retrospection

• Transaction processing and performance
• Selection of Software
• selection of hardware platforms and networking
• Bottlenecks in the system

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Success of the System

• User involvement
• User feedback
• User training
• Constant support after implementation
• Extensions to the system

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What is lacking?

• Documentation
• Vigorous testing and inspection
• Process engineering
• Serious analysis of applications and improvement
  in the data design
• Online help feature
• Security issues

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Summary

• Limitations of NCST kind of organization in
  handling and maintaining application software
• Project management- one time vs often done
  activity
• Process engineering
• team spirit

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Client infrastructure

• Proper support
• staff
• resources
• work culture
• Able to make the system operational
• Staff should bale to cope up with new technology
• Long term planning

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Issues.

• Web for accessing the application
• 3 layer architecture
• Security with Web technology
• performance after fully operational
• Component technology