UNCG Experience with Banner XE Part 1

1. Banner XE Update
(eXtensible Ecosystem)
UNC CAUSE 2013
UNC Greensboro
ITS-Management Information Systems
Jim Kane
Moreland Smith

2. Banner Administrative Screens
Brief Technology Review
Foundations in Oracle Character Mode Forms
Evolution to “GUI” Fat Client Forms late 1990s.
2004 SCT bought by SunGard
ERP Movement to the Browser...
Oracle Application Server/INB
Adobe Flex for “New Products”
Discussions starting 2008
Something other than Oracle Forms
Java Stack selected 2009 for “Horizon”

3. Available Banner XE Releases
Banner Catalog (9.1) May 2012
Banner Schedule (9.1) May 2012
Events Management (9.1) August 2012
Attendance Tracking (9.0) August 2012
Faculty Grade Entry (9.1 ) October 2012
Coming Next
Catalog & Schdule (9.2) December 2012
Faculty Grade (9.2) in Development

4. UNCG Banner XE Project Goal
● Stand up for production use within Registrar’
s Office baseline Banner Student Catalog
and Course Schedule
To do that we needed to figure out a few new
things....
XE eXtensible Ecosystem

5. Challenges: New Everything
New Fields in the Oracle Database (DBEU)
New Application Servers (Unix to Linux)
New App Server Hardware (Real to VM)
New Source Code Management Model (Git)
New Application Framework (INB to
Groovy/Grails)
New Way of Thinking (Object Oriented)
New Developer Tools (Oracle to Java Centric)
New Security Model (Oracle to SSO)

6. Scope of XE Changes
● More technical change than OS Switch or
Oracle Major Version upgrade.
● Architectural reset to position Banner
products for next 10+ years
● Evolutionary change, but "First Hurdles" are
high.
● Offers architectural choices but with
tradeoffs:
Open Source vs Commercial Products.
● Once in a Career Change, Don’t
underestimate scope!!!!!!

7. ITS Preparations
Executed Database Extension Utility (spring
2013)
Targeted Hire within MIS to focus on XE
Training Classes
Code camp (1 day)
Java (3 Day)
Groovy Grails (5 Days)
Trial Run (Feb 2013)
Banner XE Extensibility (3 days)
First Use Apps: Batch w/Groovy

8. Environment Progression
Project Development Environment (UGDEV8)
Project Environment (UGVAL7)
Testing/Validation Environment (UGVAL3)
Live in Production (BANPRD) (May 2013)

9. Benefits of XE
Off of End of Life Oracle Forms.
"Modern Look and Feel"
Separation of presentation from business logic.
Concept of Sub module as tight application vs
collection of forms & processes

10. Still Much to Do
Continue to Develop Operational Procedures in
MIS & DBA Group.
Load Balancing in support of High Availability
Overcome Authentication Hurdles.
Prepare for additional modules coming soon.

11. Implications 1
Consolidation of code into more API's
Logic in one place for use in Admin, Self
Service, Batch, Web Services, etc.
Greater reusability.
Should reduce scenarios data in anomalous
forms gets past one process but then chokes
on another.

12. Implications 2
Test Driven Development Model
● Automated Test Plans to "exercise" code for
basic input/output scenarios, issues
pass/fail.
● Speeds run throughs to catch dumb
mistakes.
● Will still require end user testing, but on
more navigation than on basics.
● Still have to author "testing code"
● Layers of Testing: Grails Test Units +
Selenium UI Testing Managed by JENKINS

13. Implications 3
UNCG must develop Single Sign On
Framework for Banner tools.
Likely Shibboleth centric for UNCG (have not
done CAS at UNCG)
Single Sign On framework must become High
(er) Availability.
Potentially extensible to other applications.

14. Implications 4
XE Administrative (INB equivalent) and XE
Self Service (UNCGenie equivalent)
technical platforms will likely become more
similar than todays INB & SSB.
More similar user experience
More similar programming environments (Still
different today)

15. Challenges 1
Speed of availability for INB Replacements.
Ellucian Roadmaps do not yet lay out target
end times for full conversion of major modules.
During interim ITS will have to maintain old and
new skill sets, hardware & maintenance effort
implications.
MTS estimate 4+ years to make transition.

16. Challenges 2
Users operating in "Mixed Mode" (Old INB &
New XE) based on which submodules they
interact with.
Keyboard Shortcuts vary
Ctrl-Page Down vs "Go"
Roll Back vs "Start Over"
Critical to get authentication working before
widespread deployment.

17. Challenges 3
Will require recoding of
UNCG Baseline Mods (35 ish)
UNCG Custom Programs (100+)
GA/Alliance Custom/Mods (???)
New framework has potential to manage our
local mods differently

18. Challenges 4
Java Dependency
Developer desktop Java management
challenges will persist. (But end user Java
issues are removed for XE apps vs INB)
MIS developers must learn multiple tools to
effectively author Java code in an Ellucian
centric environment.

19. Questions