Gregory Szorc's blog

Replacing SOLAR

If you are familar with SOLAR, you know one thing: it sucks.

Here Case is, a leading university, stuck with a course registration system powered by technology seemingly older than some of its students.

If I were on a task force whose job it was to devise a system to replace SOLAR, I would propose the following:

1. Design a database schema to replace whatever it is that SOLAR accesses.
2. Provide a web service to interface with the database, say using SOAP
   • Provide a method to return a list of departments
   • Provide a method to return a list of courses offered by a department
   • Provide a method to return info about a specific course
   • Provide a method to allow a specific individual to register for a course
3. Publish details about the web service (e.g. publish the WSDL if using SOAP)
4. Wait for one of the thousands of students mad at SOLAR to design a web interface for course registrations
5. Stop worrying about taking vacation days around registration time (to avoid the long lines of irate students who gather at The Registrar) -- it is no wonder why the actual Registrar's office is unmarked

Of course I am not on such a task force. I do not know whether such a task force exists. Perhaps someone could shed some light on the situation. Better yet, create a wiki entry for SOLAR and publish details of the forecoming changes.

You can ping this entry by using http://blog.case.edu/gps10/mt-tb.cgi/1933 .

Better yet, create a wiki entry for SOLAR and publish details of the forecoming changes.

There would have to be forthcoming changes for that to be worthwhile ;-)

I seem to recall hearing that the reason we have SOLAR instead of something else is that they needed something capable of accessing the "mainframe". Somehow I'm reminded of an animated Dilbert episode where Dilbert had to solve his company's Y2K problem by trying to get Wally to remember how he's programmed the mainframe back in the 70s. Would it be too cynical of me to suspect something equally stupid at play here?

It is true. SOLAR requires access to the mainframe. Why we can't design a system that doesn't interface with "the mainframe" is beyond me. I actually learned how SOLAR works once. It is very disturbing. It is actually a piece of software that interacts with a terminal using anolog methods, not digital. It reads the output of the screen and converts the pixels to text, which then gets transmitted to the SOLAR client. Similarly, commands entered in are emulated on a keyboard. This is why SOLAR is slow and many people can't use it at once.

Perhaps if we raise enough fuss, the university will replace it. Better yet, if a faculty member asks, his or her request will be fulfilled. Now, let's find a faculty member...

I thought I heard rumors that ITS will be moving from SOLAR to the class registration Peoplesoft module. One of my friends went to Akron, and I think they use it there. He said he liked it alot.

I might be confusing apples with oranges, but that seems like a logical approach considering the money invested in peoplesoft.

While I've never actually used SOLAR, I've never heard one good thing about it or one compliment.

Yes, Aaron: A pipedream I would love to eventually see here at Case is what the University of Akron has done. Everything goes through their Peoplesoft implementation. They call it the Zipline. They have integrated their student registration, grades and records, portal (another sore-spot amongst many here it seems), and parking information (and probably more but that was it at first glance) into one nicely packed system. Easy to use, pleasing to the eye, and no client software is needed to be installed as everything is run server-side.

Disclaimer: I have no idea how feasible that really is here at Case as I'm sure there are many backend differences between here and Akron that I do not understand. I can only see the end result. And the one I see at Akron is a much nicer, more integrated system to the students.

My ENGR 131 final project involved a "Solar Replacement". Basically we just made a visual scheduler that accesses the searchable schedule and parses all the information available there. We got best in recitation and even showed it to Case but they said they were looking into making their own upgrade.



Anyway I'm sure you have seen the fliers around campus. My teammate, Robert Klayman, still supports the program, named Scheduler Jones, updating it each semester to support changes to the searchable schedule.



It can usually be found at http://conesus.case.edu but that seems to be down right now. I know I saw it on DC++ so you can maybe try it out from there. I have a feeling that the computer that hold's the database isn't on campus right now so you won't be able to use some of the features (such as posting and viewing other student's schedules) but basic features should work just fine.



Try it out and tell us what you think of it. I'm very proud of it.



Also here is an image of what it looks like if you can't find it on DC++ either.

Wow that didn't look at all like the preview looked...sorry for the odd spacing.

As far as I know, Scheduler Jones is client side. What is needed is a pure server side program. As a sidenote, is it possible to rewrite Scheduler Jones to use regex so you don't have to keep reprogramming it each semester?

Regular expressions are great tools. Look what I did with the course evaluations system (links: 1,2, 3.

Of course, regular expressions wouldn't be necessary if things were done properly and the course schedule was available through a web service of some kind.

Well, the good news on the street is that the whole student part of the mainframe is getting replaced in the near future. Another rumor is that a Peoplesoft implementation will be replacing SOLAR. I'm not sure whether I am happy about that considering the ERP system doesn't display correctly in any browser I use. Still, any step away from SOLAR is good. Any step away from the old legacy mainframe is better.

Hey guys. In case you're wondering, Scheduler Jones does make heavy use of RegEx. However, the reason I have to spend 30 minutes getting it prepped every semester is that the registrar changes the way they display schedules every semester. They use odd numbers to display the term (051 = Spring 2003. 661 = Fall 2005), and they like to add random CENTER tags.

But, I spend a few minutes updating it, and it works. By the way, we asked both EAS and the registrar if we could use it as a SOLAR replacement, and they said they're moving to PeopleSoft in 2-3 years. That was 2 years ago.

Anyway, the Jones is now operational at http://conesus.case.edu.

Cheers.