> Policies, Procedures & Standards

ITSS Application Programming Standards

If you look at today's programming technology landscape, you'll see amazing variety. There are dozens of languages and tools to choose from, and like medical specialties, no one can master all of them. In addition, there may be technical issues, such as operating system compatibility, that may lead you to choose one tool over another, even though they both accomplish the same thing.

ITSS selects standard technologies to ensure efficiency in developing, implementing, and supporting campus information systems. These standards include programming languages and tools used by the Application Systems division. ITSS bases technology choices on their compatibility with current enterprise systems, such as PeopleSoft and Banner; their fit with emerging technologies, such as portals; and their ability to work on our standard operating systems, Unix and Windows.

Our site license for Oracle products gives us a robust toolkit for our projects. In addition to providing a standard development platform for ITSS internally, these products are available for departmental use.

The following table lists our current application development standards:

Category	Language / Tool	Drivers for Selection	Restrictions
Database Management System
	Oracle	Oracle is the database platform of choice for all applications
Application Integration
	PL/SQL, SQL	Communication between Oracle-based systems
	Java (using Oracle JDeveloper)	For Oracle Portal portlet development and for integrations that are not possible in PL/SQL
Data Management Applications
	Oracle AppEX	Internet, enterprise, or departmental applications of any complexity
	Oracle Forms, web-deployed	Intranet, data-entry intensive web applications with many screens/views, rich user interface requirements, and complex data validation/business logic. Also for Banner development.
	Oracle Forms, client-server	Supported for legacy applications	Not for new projects
	Microsoft Access	Supported for legacy applications	Not for new projects
	Visual Basic	Supported for legacy applications	Not for new projects
	PeopleTools	For PeopleSoft HR/Financials development	PeopleSoft only
Reporting / Data Visualization
	PL/SQL Web Toolkit, AppEX	Internet or campus-wide reporting where HTML output is adequate or required
	Crystal Reports Enterprise	For all enterprise systems, particularly for reports with strict formatting requirements
	SQR	Peoplesoft processes and reports are written in SQR