HP e3000 case study: Mohawk College

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Mohawk College is a Hamilton-based community college serving a large area in the industrial heartland of southern Ontario. Established in 1966, the school now has almost 17,000 full-time and 55,000 part-time students and six main campuses.

A leader in the use of computer technology, Mohawk was among the early adopters of the Internet. Grades and enrollment information are available on a network of computer kiosks across the campus. Ever the innovator, Mohawk developed one of the country’s first Internet applications to give students their grades and enrollment information over the World Wide Web. The college also offers a unique Internet-based housing registry for out-of-town students. Both applications are powered by Speedware Autobahn.

“We wanted to help students get the information they need without leaving their home PC screen,” said Don Mason, Mohawk’s manager of systems and programming. “Putting SAM (Student Access Module) on the Web helps eliminate long line-ups at computer kiosks on campus, and also saves a lot of time and paperwork by processing many routine informationchanges on the Internet.

“The housing application is a great time saver for our out-of-town students, and those on co-op placements,” says Mason.

SAM allows students to see their marks, timetables, locker assignments, cumulative progress toward their diploma or certificate, and name-and-address information. It also allows them to input changes to the information, such as new addresses or phone numbers. The system is accessed through the student number and PIN. These applications were created with Speedware Autobahn, a powerful rapid application development environment for deploying mission-critical applications on the Internet. Speedware Autobahn applications connect students dynamically to Mohawk’s corporate databases, so the information they see over the Web is current.

With Speedware Autobahn, Mohawk College was able to optimize its IT investment. The college’s computing environment includes an HP3000 server that houses TurboImage and Allbase databases. With its dynamic database interface, well-established technology and ability to handle multiple ‘hits’ against the application, Speedware Autobahn is the ideal application development environment for developing and deploying interactive, transactional Web applications.

“Probably the biggest advantage was Speedware Autobahn’s compatibility with our legacy programming. Also, we needed an application that can take many concurrent hits—both SAM and the housing registry can easily have a few dozen sessions active at a time, even more at certain times of the year,” says Marilyn Gris, Mohawk’s webmaster.

The housing registry allows users to select all aspects of their housing, including the type of housing, the district, smoking or non-smoking, parking availability and distance from public transit. Because housing data is entered and updated over the Web dynamically, responses to students’ housing criteria are current. Students then telephone the housing provider directly to arrange a viewing.

Notes Don Mason, “the use of selection criteria helps students organize their search much more effectively than travelling to the housing office and scanning hundreds of postings on a bulletin board. With the Internet directory, they can select the best possibilities and make the initial contact before they make the trip.”