SNAP SHOTS

SNAP SHOTS

Deutsche Leasing AG

appreciable investment, but we calculated

identify and apply for scholarships while we would spend less money over the

www.deutsche-leasing.com

helping schools and colleges disperse long term if we put the right foundation Industry: Financial services

Location: Bad Homburg, Germany

available funds. For example, a donor in place,” Foster says. “We have a well-

Employees: 1,600

might want to target a scholarship to a defined vision for what we are trying to

Oracle products: Oracle WebLogic Server,

student with a 3.8 grade point average accomplish, and Oracle’s enterprise archi-

Oracle Database, Oracle Reports, Oracle Fusion

who went to a local high school. “With tecture enables us to think long term and

Middleware

this system, we can help students know to integrate new capabilities over time.”

U.S. Department of the Interior,

Bureau of Indian Affairs

which scholarships they are eligible to

apply for,” she says. A FRAMEWORK FOR INTEGRATION

www.indianaffairs.gov

Hillstrom estimates that students will Developing an enterprise architecture pre-

Location: Washington DC

save time applying for financial aid, and sented unique challenges at the University

Industry: Government

financial aid officers will need less time of Wisconsin when its student financial aid Oracle products: Oracle Universal Content

Employees: 10,000

to evaluate applications using the new office set out to create an online scholar-

process. In addition, Gunderson says, ship service to match qualified undergrad-

Management, Oracle Web Content Management

for WebCenter, Oracle Secure Enterprise Search,

every department and college at the uni- uate students with available awards. The

Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle Database, Oracle Real

versity will ultimately save time, money, financial aid office worked with all of the

Application Clusters

and effort by not having to support its university’s undergraduate schools and col-

University of Wisconsin

own financial grant systems. leges as well as the Division of Information

www.wisc.edu

The project was rolled out to continu- Technology, but the university’s decentral-

Location: Madison, Wisconsin

ing students in the College of Letters and ized environment meant that business

Industry: Education

Science in September 2009. Ultimately, objectives—much less an IT strategy—

Employees: 18,000

the new application will be available to all were not necessarily aligned.

Oracle products: Oracle WebLogic Suite,

undergraduate enrollment, about 25,000 “Each school and college is indepen-

Oracle JDeveloper 11g, Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle Database, PeopleSoft Campus solutions,

students in all. Hillstrom, Gunderson, and dent,” says Mary Hillstrom, assistant direc-

Oracle Application Development Framework

Hill all believe that their experience will tor in the Office of Student Financial Aid.

influence other projects at the university. “It’s been hard even to know how many

“I think [a system like this] gets traction scholarships we have on campus and, of those, what their total

at the business level first,” Hill says. “What hooks a lot of busi- worth is. And that was part of the challenge of this project—

ness users are the user interface features. Then we can speak to making a decentralized campus work in a centralized way so

some of the advantages at the development level.” that we could better serve students.”

“We are making it easier for the schools and colleges on The Office of Student Financial Aid decided to create a

campus to offer and award scholarships,” says Hillstrom. “The Scholarships@UW-Madison application, integrating it with the

better we can automate this process, the better we can help university’s surrounding services infrastructure. “We wanted to

students meet their academic goals.” O take advantage of Oracle’s direction,” says Karen Gunderson, technical manager for the project. “And we wanted a service-

David Baum (david@dbaumcomm.com) is a freelance business writer based in oriented-architecture approach.”

Santa Barbara, California.

As an Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle WebLogic Suite customer, the university already had a license for

next

STEPS

Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF), a

Java environment for building enterprise applications. Todd

VISIT the Enterprise Architecture Center

Hill, a lead developer on the project, decided to use this otn.oracle.com/architect/entarch framework with Oracle JDeveloper as the application devel-

READ more about SOA

opment environment.

oracle.com/technologies/soa

Using Oracle ADF Faces Rich Client permitted the univer-

Oracle Fusion Middleware

sity to create a rich, interactive environment that displays lots

oracle.com/products/middleware

of data relationships simultaneously. “Oracle ADF Faces Rich

Oracle Modernization

Client is very Ajax friendly,” says Hill.

oracle.com/technologies/modernization

The Scholarships@UW-Madison application gets student

Oracle Tuxedo’s COBOL conversion capabilities

data from Oracle’s PeopleSoft Campus solutions; with its com-

oracle.com/products/middleware/tuxedo

ponent interfaces, PeopleSoft Integration Broker made access

DOWNLOAD

to this data relatively easy. The university used Oracle ADF

Oracle SOA Suite

otn.oracle.com/products/soa/soasuite/collateral/downloads.html

security to allow fine-grain control over pages and task flows,