Transaction Processing: Use Cases from Higher Education
At the April 5th Data Quality Campaign Meeting on Data Standards, a participant asked if there were any of the uses of the data should be transaction (real-time) exchanges as contrasted to periodic file exchanges. No one gave a response to the question. There was a request for use cases; the following are several from my experience.
Context
Wikipedia describes online transaction processing:
Online transaction processing, or OLTP, refers to a class of systems that facilitate and manage transaction-oriented applications, typically for data entry and retrieval transaction processing. The term is somewhat ambiguous; some understand a "transaction" in the context of computer or database transactions, while others (such as the Transaction Processing Performance Council) define it in terms of business or commercial transactions. OLTP has also been used to refer to processing in which the system responds immediately to user requests. An automatic teller machine (ATM) for a bank is an example of a commercial transaction processing application.
The technology is used in a number of industries, including banking, airlines, mailorder, supermarkets, and manufacturing. Applications include electronic banking, order processing, employee time clock systems, e-commerce, and eTrading. … a type of computer processing in which the computer responds immediately to user requests. Each request is considered to be a transaction. Automatic teller machines for banks are an example of transaction processing.
Those attending the DQC meeting are using systems where users are communicating, over the Internet using a browser, with a computer system that responds from a database populated from transported data files that may be days to months old..
Use Cases[1]
Based on my experience, these use cases have been discussed.
Migratory Workers[2]
In California there is a large population that moves with their work. Agriculture and construction are examples of this type of work. The K-12 school districts have sought a system that would let the principal and teacher request and immediately receive the education record of a student (and their family) who is transferring to a new location and new district. The suggested educational record consisted of a transcript plus health records—especially a record of vaccinations.
The Arkansas Department of Education had asked this need be posed at the original California Department of Education sponsored meeting.
Student Loan Data (Meteor)
College and university students may have loans from several different lenders, and the loans may have been sold to another lender (often as a syndication). Eligibility for federal financial aid is dependent upon a student’s loan history. Since repayment of federal student loans begins after a student leaves college—which is typically several years—the student may be unaware of which lenders then have the student’s loans.
The student loan industry sought a network which would (1) permit a student to see their student loan records, (2) permit a college financial aid officer to see the records of students attending their college or university, and (3) employees of lenders, servicers, and guaranty agencies to see the records of students who are their customers.
This real-time system, from the National Council of Higher Education Loan Programs (NCHELP) was developed in 2001 and has been used since that time.[3]
Dual-Enrollment and Financial Aid Eligibility
A student may receive federal student aid if the total enrollment is 6 hours (units) or more. This may come from one or more institutions. When enrolling simultaneously in multiple institutions the procedure was expected to be one of the financial aid directors taking responsibility for processing federal financial aid for the student on the basis of the enrollment in both, or all, colleges and universities.
However, that financial aid director’s college or university has financial responsibility for determining and maintaining the student’s eligibility based on enrollment and “satisfactory academic progress” at the other institutions. At a Department of Education Federal Student Aid focus group none of the financial aid directors would accept responsibility for federal inancial aid since they had no immediate access to the student’s records at the second institution.[4] Privacy would prevent the second institution from providing unrestricted access to student records since the financial aid director only has authorization for access to that specific student’s records (and other students from the same institution that may also be enrolled); that level of authorization control was not available in any current student system.
The real-time access to a specific student’s records would provide the information. The group agreed that this was not then technically possible and they would not be responsible for processing that student’s federal financial aid.
By federal policy the answer is “yes,” by practice the answer is “no.”
Electronic Resumes
The HR-XML Consortium created an electronic resume format in 2002 and approved the recommendation in 2003 following a 30,000 candidate [employee] pilot in Germany where 6,000 were hired. At that time Microsoft provided a Word add-on that produced the electronic resume under the assumption candidate users could forward the XML-based resume file directly to an employer. This would avoid the approximate two to three week delay for entering the data from a paper resume and would permit the candidate to control how his/her electronic resume would be populated with data.
HR-XML asked that higher education participate in the development of the final recommendation; there was no response from higher education.[5] At the same time there was some discussion in the Jasig uPortal team of creating a portlet that a student could use to author or modify and subsequently transmit the resume directly to an employer. Contact with Career Counselors suggested this would assist students applying for a job and encouraged development. However, the issue became data transport since employers and staffing companies were using real-time transaction processing. At this point, the discussions were discontinued.[6],[7]
The HR-XML Consortium revised the specification 15 April 2007 [ns.hr-xml.org/2_5/HR-XML-2_5/SEP/Resume.html]. As it evolved a student now would have to use a commercial staffing agency as an intermediary to gain the benefits of an electronic resume—early review and student control over resume content and coding.
Electronic Transcripts[8]
In July 2008 four transcript servicers—National Transcript Center, Xap, ConnectEdu, and Docufide, later joined by the National Student Clearinghouse—agreed to establish a network to exchange transcripts among the servicers in real-time. This would enable any servicer to request and receive transcripts from any college or university of any servicer or any college or university that supported real-time transaction processing and the PESC XML transcript.
The group has not yet met; two companies are exchanging transcripts using the PESC format over a proprietary file exchange network.
The need for a transaction network was identified by ConnectEDU and an “implementation guide”—here the same as an OASIS framework—was presented at a meeting of the EA2 (Electronic Authentication and Authorization) Task Force meeting at the PESC Summit April 8, 2009.[9]
Implementation is a high priority for both colleges and universities and PESC. Work should begin soon on the proposed exchange.
Determining Transfer Credit from Course Descriptions
The PESC Course Inventory Working Group is developing a specification for describing a course. There are several purposes—creating catalogs, “course advertising,” and for determining transfer credit for courses offered by another college or university. An Implementation Guide is being authored now. This work should be completed in the next few months.
Currently the use case is to exchange files between sending and receiving institutions that have a high volume. This would be done using file transport generally on the same production cycle as a catalog with term updates.
One of the considerations was the future possibility of real-time exchange where an admissions officer can, in real-time, obtain the catalog description of course for the time the student took the course. This would be done using transaction processing and the PESC Course Inventory specification.
Although most students are presenting work completed previously at other institution, more than 30% are enrolled in two institutions simultaneously. The availability of real-time course data would permit an admissions counselor to tell a student what credit would be given for courses taken at the second institution. This is especially important as dual enrollment—college and high school—is increasingly a state government objective. This requires real-time access to the second institution’s course catalog. While it is often possible to find information about a current course on the institution’s Web site, this may require more time than the counselor has available.[10]
Because students can take distance learning courses from other colleges and universities and publishers, the number of students expecting transfer credit from distance learning is estimated to exceed 10% of enrolled students.[11]
Several years ago the California Community Colleges developed a prototype that would display a PESC electronic transcript in several formats for student, faculty, and guidance counselor use. The prototype used Meteor technology with OASIS standards for transport and then current versions of Apache code. At the time the Chancellor Office’s consultants said the technology was too complex for implementation. The California Community Colleges now use a commercial transcript servicer based on files submitted by the colleges, typically at the end of a term.[12]The prototype code is available.
International Students (RS3G)
The RS3G (Rome Student Standards and System Group) is automating the Bologna process for students that study at several institutions.[13] About 250,000 U.S. students attend European Union universities, and 35,000 EU students attend U.S. colleges and universities.RS3G has now become a EUNIS (European University Information Systems) Task Force. EUNIS is comparable to EDUCAUSE, but with a sharply different style.
In the Bologna process the student’s faculty advisor at the university requests placement of the student in a specific program at the receiving university. The receiving university responds whether the student’s request—which includes the Diploma Supplement—can be granted. Notice that transfer credit is assured since the faculty advisor has determined the credit at the student’s institution should receive from the courses taken at the receiving university before the student takes the course.[14]
The RS3G is expected to recommend the OSCI (Online Service Computer Interface) standard for transaction data transport. Version 1.2 was published in 2002 and version 2.0, scheduled for February, is expected within a few months.
Preliminary analysis shows that OSCI is almost identical to what is recommended for Meteor version 4. This would include the use of WS-Addressing, WS-Security, and WS-Trust; all published since the OSCI 1.0 specification. Both are SOAP based and use digital signatures and optional message encryption for privacy.[15]
U.S. students would benefit from timely electronic processing of enrollment documents as contrasted to exchange of paper documents, even via facsimile, that require data entry and may have errors. U.S. universities would benefit by immediate responses when recruiting international students.
Jim Farmer19 May 2009
[1]A use case in software engineering and systems engineering is a description of a system’s behaviour as it responds to a request that originates from outside of that system. In other words, a use case describes "who" can do "what" with the system in question. The use case technique is used to capture a system's behavioral requirements by detailing scenario-driven threads through the functional requirements.
[2] This use case was discussed at a statewide meeting—about 10 years ago—sponsored by the California Department of Education. As CIO of Los Rios Community College District I attended representing community colleges.
[3]The system was designed using standards available in 2001 and complies with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the NIST standards for Levels of Assurance, computer system security, and record keeping. A prototype was developed by the team who developed the open-source uPortal product. Based on a demonstration of that prototype, more than thirty NCHELP members contributed financially to the development of the production version.
[4] The author was employed by the U.S. Department of Education at the time and, with others, conducted the focus group.
[5] Subsequently Michael Sessa became Executive Director of PESC and established a working relationship with the HR-XML Consortium. Version 2 of the HR-XML specifications were published before PESC could implement joint development. An HR-XML representative has participated in PESC Conferences. Now an HR-XML representative participates in EA2 Task Force meetings.
[6] The HR-XML data transport requirements are not interoperable with PESC’s current data transport specification, but those participating in the EA3 Task Force has found the differences are only in SOAP headers and could be resolved using the latest OASIS specifications.
[7]There were subsequent discussions between the National Student Clearinghouse and the HR-XML Consortium about the Clearinghouse providing this service via student’s logging in to the Clearinghouse to prepare or modify the resume and the Clearinghouse would take responsibility for exchanging the resume with staffing agencies and the hiring employer.
[8] This is based on an agreement among five transcript services to interoperate in real-time at the 5th Annual Conference
[9] OASIS eGovernment Technical Committee uses the word “framework” to mean a choice of standards, options and values rather than creating a new standard or extending a current standard in a way that prevents full interoperability.
[10] Because of the number of institutions and disiplay formats. Also there is a difference between data displayed to a student and the more inclusive PESC course inventory record.
[11] Most students take distance learning from the institution in which they are enrolled. However increasingly students are taking courses that are not available from their institution, often because of available course sections and class size limitations.
[12] Because some community colleges have terms that begin every two or four weeks, short courses, and “open entry/open exit” courses of in determinant length, the number of transcripts in error is increasing; currency is limited by file transfers and submittal schedules.
[13] PESC Board Director David Moldoff is an advisor to the PS3G Steering Committee and participates in their activites. An American is ineligible since the U.S. and Canada are not members of the European Higher Education Area.
[14] Clifford Adelman, Institute of Higher Education Policy, has suggested the U.S. consider adopting the Bologna processes. See “The Bologna Club: What U.S. Higher Education Can Learn from a Decade of
European Reconstruction” and “The Bologna Process for U.S. Eyes: Re-learning Higher Education in
the Age of Convergence.” Reports are available from
[15] Several of us are expected to meet with the OSCI team to see if OSCI could be used without modification or identify the modifications that would be suggested to permit interoperability between universities in the 46-country European Higher Education Area and the U.S. and Canada. The OSCI specification will be submitted to CEN, the EU standards body, when it is completed. This is the motivation for an immediate meeting with the OSCI team.