Cornerstone Technical Architecture Assumptions

Note: Assumptions imply "where appropriate" unless explicitly stated otherwise.

• General
  • The planning period is five years.
  • The development of standards will be a major University initiative in the '93-'94 fiscal year.
  • Standards will be deployed and maintained University-wide. Compliance with standards is necessary to achieve business objectives.
• Data
  • Online transaction processing (OLTP) and query capabilities must both be provided. Although a single relational database product is strongly preferred, these functions do not necessarily need to be provided by the same physical database nor the same database product. If separate products are used, there must be technical integration between them.
  • The bulk of administrative OLTP data will remain on a centralized server(s).
  • A common base of data must be provided to facilitate sharing, control redundancy, and satisfy retention requirements. Although it may span multiple physical locations, this base is "logically" common in that the elements have a common definition and may be shared by multiple applications.
  • Security requirements implement "best industry practice" (i.e. most appropriate) and are enforced at the server level enterprise-wide -- not at the desktop.
• Applications
  • Applications deployed will be a mixture of purchased packaged solutions and custom-developed solutions. Only customization of purchased packages (i.e. administrative business applications) that is explicitly supported by the vendor for a package's useful life will be allowed. Packages from one or more vendors must be integrated with one another.
  • In-house customization of public domain software will be permitted only after an assessment of lifecycle costs, risks, benefits, and resource requirements is performed to insure that the customized software can be adequately supported.
  • Legacy applications and data will be migrated to the new Technical Architecture only after the business process(es) they support have been reviewed for re-engineering opportunities, and subsequently re-engineered as appropriate.
  • System interfaces to legacy databases will be provided. Any additional investments made in these systems will be to provide query access to legacy data and not to enhance OLTP applications that have yet to be re-engineered. Note: Enhancements mandated by outside regulatory bodies would be incorporated into legacy application software and databases as required.
  • Desktop capability will be maximized to the extent possible through the use of client/server and other technologies.
  • Students and faculty will join staff as major users (i.e. "customers") of administrative systems during the planning period.
• Infrastructure
  • The Internet is Penn's wide-area network. Therefore, the TCP/IP suite of protocols will continue to be the enterprise-wide protocols of choice for administrative applications and services (e.g. electronic mail). Appropriate additional protocols will be available for workgroup services (e.g. AppleTalk, Novell IPX/SPX) and be reliably transported throughout campus to support workgroups that span campus subnets.
  • The infrastructure must provide robust and reliable network connectivity from off-campus.
  • Network operating systems will include automated enterprise-wide directory services which allow users to access multiple servers as required with a minimum of administration.
  • The new architecture will support the use of graphical user interfaces (GUIs). GUIs are preferred for new application development.
  • Unix (version to be determined) is the preferred application server and data server operating system. Workgroup servers used exclusively for file and/or print services may run proprietary network operating systems (e.g. Netware, AppleShare).
  • Windows NT will not mature enough for desktop or server usage during the first half of the planning period to offer significant new technological capabilities. OS/2 is not considered a viable option.
  • Operating systems tied to a single vendor's hardware platform are not desirable for servers.
  • There will be a single database product for all new applications and databases (OLTP and query) involving University administrative data.
  • The database product selected will support relational SQL queries.
• Organization
  • The IT organization (central and distributed) must be able to adjust to changing skills and operations requirements. Significant investments will be required.
  • Application development will continue to be a distributed activity across the University.