Gregory Szorc's blog

The Beauty of XML and Middleware

Earlier today, I realized what happens when you don't provide others a way to easily access your information; people invent the wheel again. I was in a USG tech meeting and we were talking about calendars, something that has been addressed numerous times on Blog@Case. USG is developing a calendaring system that we hope becomes the principle calendar used to reference student events. Apparently we are talking about getting it integrated with those plasma tv's all around campus, but I'm not sure how that is going to happen. Anyway, we were trying to list all of the student-centered calendars on campus and how they were operated. We weren't sure if the UPB calendar was in a database, so, using my root access on the server, I checked it. While I was there, I noticed some alarming database tables. These tables served to track student group membership, something that USG does already through the USG Finance System. I checked their web site, and sure enough they had a basic identity management system set up. Even though USG is the principle authority on this data, someone else has chosen to reproduce the data. Why? Because they don't have access to the data.

This is where web services (i.e. middleware) comes to the rescue. The author of UPB's web site apparently does not know about http://usg.case.edu/funding/webservice.php. This little script allows you to query the USG database for all sorts of information, including a list of student groups on campus as well as detailed information about these student groups, including membership. You can even get a list of future events. All of the data is transferred in XML, so it can be easily read by computers.

If every major service at Case offered some kind of syndicated feed, life would be a better place. I loathe having to log in to Blackboard to check info instead of reading my news reader. I hate having to visit www.case.edu to find the latest news. Most of all, I hate having to visually inspect a handful of calendars to find relevant events. Some day, people will realize that others have a need for the information they possess and will make this information easily available for anyone to read.

Publishing information has the unintended consequence that others will use the information in a manner not initially conceived. Think about this scenario: Case course information is published via a web service. Also, your DPR is accessible in XML form. The official course list web site can query the course list service to retrieve information matching a student's request. The DPR service can be queried by the Portal to display your DPR. The unintended consequence is sometime down the road, a student has a senior project that uses the two to create a service that automatically creates your schedule for you by looking for needed requirements on your DPR and cross-referencing this with classes available. It could even optimize your schedule!

Another scenario is that course survey results can be accessible in XML form (already a reality if you know about SCREW. Unintended consequence, a programmer with a good background in statistics creates a program that does statistical analysis on these results. This is extremely beneficial for internal benchmarking purposes.

And, after these first two unintended consquences occur, then someone else comes along and optimizes your schedule based upon the average rating of the professors teaching the courses. Far from reality? Not really. There are just too many people out there who cling to their belief that data belongs to them and them only. Until these zealots are forced out of their selfish, hoarding ways, we are left complaining about the current state of unorganized information.

You can ping this entry by using http://blog.case.edu/gps10/mt-tb.cgi/4409 .

No! That's all wrong! Don't you know that all of Case's data-related problems can be solved by simply handing over another half million dollars to Oracle?

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