Computer Technology Centre

Head: Ing. Michal Brandejs, CSc.

Botanická 68a, 602 00 Brno

Phone: ++420–5–41 512 322

The development of the Masaryk University Information System (is.muni.cz) began in December 1998. The first applications for test runs were available to a limited number of users in January 1999. Officially, the Information System came into operation on 1^st March, 1999. At the start of the system, applications for the collection of data on publishing activities, CVs and the Subject Catalogue were made available. Since then, the main priority has been to develop applications for registration on courses of study.

Initial usernames and passwords were issued to students, together with a temporary student card, on 1^st March, 1999. MU employees obtained their usernames and passwords from the faculty network administrators.

By 31^st December, 1999, after it had been in operation for less than one year, the Information System had 11,972 users actively working with it. There are 21,899 persons with issued usernames and passwords, and a total of 44,738 persons are registered on the system.

Until 22^nd May, 1999, the system ran on a two-processor Sun Microsystems Ultra 2 workstation with 128 MB RAM. At the moment, the system runs on a Sun Microsystems Ultra 450 server with four processors, 2 GB RAM and 32 GB of disk memory. We expect this equipment to be sufficient for the running of the system in the year 2000.

A higher working load is expected in the following year (2001), and it will therefore be necessary to expand the system by one more server.

• Number of accesses made up to 31^st December, 1999: 3, 707, 045
• Maximum achieved response of the server: 5, 670 requests made in one hour
• Overall volume of administered data: 3.2 GB (plus photographs of the users: 240 MB)
• Number of scripts (individual programmes) of the systems: 303
• Number of types of registered data: c. 1,500 (contained in 240 database tables and approx. 30 categories)
• Number of publishing records: 200,000 (of which 16,000 were made for the RIV)
• Number of records related to study subjects (autumn 1999 and spring 2000): 6,230 and 5,842 respectively
• Number of queries answered on the contact address: c. 250
• Length of time for which the server was not accessible: c. five hours

Different groups of users make use of a number of applications, access them from different access points and have different access rights (e.g. for viewing or editing); therefore, the following categories are only auxiliary.

• editing and viewing basic information on a subject
• editing and viewing additional information on a subject
• working with the calendar of events of a given time period
• mass handling of the contents of a time period
• survey of time periods
• editing and survey of types of subject completion and evaluation
• extract from the list of subjects (can be configured)
• extract from information on a subject
• definition of specific attributes of subjects
• issuing and viewing of attributes

• list of students
• thumbnail of students’ photographs
• sending a letter to students
• entering evaluations
• exporting/importing evaluations
• survey of the completion of evaluations
• printing the Subject Conclusion Report
• history of evaluation changes
• working with examination dates
• review of conflicting examination dates of my students
• issue of exemptions from/permission to enrol
• editing the list of teachers
• editing more than one subject simultaneously
• configuring the notebook: various parameters and limitations of the student list

• registered subjects and grades attained
• examination dates and registrations
• e-mailing of evaluation changes
• registration of and enrolment in subjects
• review of templates for choice of subjects
• history of changes to my specifications for registration and enrolment
• registration of subjects
• applications for exemptions from subject enrolment
• registration and enrolment statistics
• applying for accommodation at Halls of Residence
• checking the data for my student card
• information on student cards

• personal data handling (for authorised workers)
• new personal card
• checking and updating of my data
• processing requests to change personal data
• statistics for checking of data
• review of my holiday
• searches for persons at MU
• personal web pages of the ISMU user
• editing of presented data

• registering the course of study of individual students
• mass entering of data on the course of study of a specific subject/period
• individual student’s subject enrolment and evaluation
• mass handling of subject enrolment or registration
• register of students’ final dissertation works
• mass selection of students according to my own criteria
• working with the list of students
• printing my own lists and surveys
• printing subjects enrolled in
• printing matriculation certificates
• sending group e-mail messages
• foreign student enrolment processing
• statistics on inter-faculty studies registering a person from a different faculty (or not belonging to any)
• data checking for the national student register
• data output for the health insurance company

• CV register
• completing my CV form
• printing, exporting and publishing my CV
• survey of existing CVs and related searches
• publishing activity register
• review of publications by MU staff or students
• review of publications sorted by MU departments
• review of RIV list sorted by department, person or year
• registering and publishing my own publications
• exporting and printing lists of publications

• mailbox
• search of addresses of MU employees and students
• subject search of information contained in the ISMU
• display of data in the databases of ISMU
• review of study programmes, fields of study and subjects studied at MU

• change of access password and username
• mass issuing of passwords to students
• administration of access rights
• change of external redirection of mail
• information on issued microchip card
• length of my log-on to ISMU
• charts on the use of ISMU
• printing subsystem
• test of correct Czech diacritics
• survey of work loads as planned
• news and FAQs

Besides direct access through a web browser it is very important to support the sending of messages that the recipient can read later (in the off-line mode of communication). A part of the system is the e-mail server mail.muni.cz, which provides each user with a guaranteed mailbox accessible through a web interface. Users can redirect their mail to any other address. E-mail is the standard form of communication in the applications between the student and the study department as well as in the Teacher’s Notebook. Mass mailings to students are possible.

Unlike with all previous systems, it was possible to remove 350 duplicit entries; the ambiguous birth registration number identification was removed

About 20 percent of accesses were made from networks outside MU. Mass complex operations (course registrations at the large faculties) amounted to 90 percent.

All users were permitted to view information about themselves as well as request changes thereto electronically in the following mass operations: collecting information on publishing, filling in CVs, filling in the Subject Catalogue and supplementary information from the teacher, purifying the data relevant to the Student Card and especially the Student Register (updating of personal data) and registration of courses for autumn 1999 and spring 2000

The system enables the Faculties to explicitly differentiate between the levels of access of different users: the system of access rights now registers about 30 different rights. Other large areas where conflicting demands have to be reconciled are course descriptions and the relations between subjects, semestral time-schedules and the demands made for the registering and checking of study programmes for the various sets of Study Regulations. A general instrument of the description of the individual subjects and specialisations are the attributes. The Faculties have defined almost 800 subject attributes.

The system allows the user to access all personal information registered by the system, in accordance with Law 256/1992. Efforts have been made to make the ISMU as transparent as possible in order to minimalize the necessity of obtaining the relevant information directly from the administration staff of the University. The ISMU acquires (and makes accessible) some data from the Unified System of the Personnel Agenda of MU.

The system enables individual faculties to acquire data for their internal uses and purposes, either by means of the Presenter, which generates data in various formats (based on the XML input) or via direct access to the database. The priority is to make data accessible according to the access authorisation of the user.

The system is very stable as far as its hardware and software are concerned. Its performance is sufficient when running on standard load. When the working load is extreme (registration of hundreds of students on courses), the system slows down considerably. This problem is being addressed by optimizing individual applications.

Experience from the ten months of operation shows that the system in its present stage of development provides users with quick access to data that they need for their work or studies. The developers of the system are able to accommodate many requests for expanding or minor changes in a matter of hours. There are, of course, requests whose inner logic leads to interventions into the system of a larger scale, and the time needed to address these is much longer. The developers are open to suggestions from the user public.

The web environment of the server allows anyone to access the system without the necessity of installing special client software. Users can therefore use different computers to those in faculty computer labs.

The main problem is the performance of the system, both subjective (a slow network connection gives the user an impression of overall sluggishness of the system) and objective, especially under extreme working loads. The performance of the system is closely monitored and its response is constantly improved.