Un-Focus on FOCUS By Roger Lurie Arizona State University [Originally published in _ASU Computing News_, May 1995, pp. 26-27] It is the first day of the semester. You, the instructor, sit down at your desk and look over the official roster of students enrolled in your classes. You realize that what you really want is a file with all of the names and id's to use as the basis for setting up an electronic gradebook. The result of what you desire is at your fingertips because you remember hearing about the new Class Roster Reporting System and you get a copy of the software to install on your personal computer. Then, instead of manually typing all of the names and id's, you now double-click on an icon from within Microsoft Windows. You select the class by selecting the semester, campus and schedule line number. If you do not remember the schedule line number, that is okay! There is a FIND button that will guide you in the process of looking it up. The roster comes up in a window and you scroll up and down and decide that it has everything that you want to use for your electronic gradebook in Excel, Access or ParGRADE. From here, you save the roster into a file on your personal computer or print to a local or LAN-connected printer. Perhaps you decide that there is additional information that you want to include on the roster. Click on Preferences and choose the fields you want to include on the roster. Click on Preferences and choose the fields you want to include, such as student phone number, academic level, major, etc. Decide whether you want the roster sorted by name or ASU ID. All of these are selections that may be chosen from the Preferences window in the new Class Roster program. Click on Build Roster again and _voila_, a newly formatted roster customized to your preferences. Soon, what was described above will be a reality. This new program is being developed by Administrative Information Technology (AIT) to replace a comparable FOCUS program that has been available on the OfficeVision (VM/CMS) system for the past six years. This new Class Roster program is currently being test piloted by a group of 15 faculty and staff members at Arizona State University. The first version is being piloted for Windows, with a Macintosh version planned for later this year. Let us focus on FOCUS for a few moments. FOCUS has been widely used in administrative departments at ASU for a variety of purposes. Class Roster is an example of an application developed using FOCUS that needs to be replaced, to allow ASU to divorce itself from the VM/CMS system. Several departments have used FOCUS as a way of getting reports from administrative systems, such as the Student Information System. This use of FOCUS is moving towards the ASU Data Warehouse, a highly successful and useful project sponsored by Data Administration. FOCUS has also been widely used for a variety of other applications, such as Graduate College Prospect Tracking, Residential Life Work Orders, Disability Resources for Students and many others. AIT is playing an active role in ensuring a smooth transition from FOCUS to alternative methods of computing. Class Roster Reporting System is one of many projects underway. The other projects have all involved a cooperative development effort with departmental units, including Residential Life, Graduate College, and Disability Resources for Students. These projects all have a common recipe. Let us explore the common ingredients that have allowed success with the FOCUS replacement projects. Sybase Sybase relational database management system is increasing in use throughout the administrative and academic communities at ASU. For example, the ASU Data Warehouse runs Sybase under UNIX on a SUN 630 MP server. The new applications being developed to replace FOCUS are also taking advantage of this database technology. One of the significant advantages to the departments is that the database integrity and backups are all managed by Information Technology (IT). PowerBuilder PowerBuilder is a visual programming environment for developing database applications. Currently, PowerBuilder runs under Windows or Windows NT, with UNIX and Macintosh versions expected to be released this year. PowerBuilder is particularly useful for setting up client/server applications, with the application residing on the user's desktop (the "client"), accessing a remote database server such as Sybase (the "server"). Using PowerBuilder, the developers connect to Sybase and work with the database in a graphical environment. By clicking on an icon and drawing a line between the entities to be connected, two tables can be joined together. Applications can be developed to have the look and feel of a true Windows system, with pull down menus, scroll bars, graphics, drop down lists, radio buttons, etc. PowerBuilder also has some object-oriented features, expecially in the area of inheritance. What this means is that an object (such as a menu or window) can be inherited by other objects. If you need to go back and change the parent object, that change is automatically reflected in the children. PowerTool Speaking of objects, AIT has acquired a class object library that is customized for PowerBuilder. This PowerTool library has proven itself to a significant time saver since the objects that we inherit are already written for us. An example of this is a log on window to accept entry of a userid and password for Sybase. Instead of writing this from scratch, we inherited it from PowerTool and then applied our special customizations to the child. In doing this, we reduce development time for the application significantly. Upper CASE Tools Upper CASE tools are an integral part of application development using PowerBuilder. CASE, by the way, stands for Computer Aided Software Engineering. It is a method of capturing the business processes, rules, work flow and data base specifications. An upper CASE tool will help us develop standards and methods for all PowerBuilder developers. Also, the tools provide a means of documenting systems, once they have been developed. Joint Application Development (JAD) Joint Application Development (JAD), as pioneered by IBM, has been used for the Graduate College and Residential Life projects. It involves a series of meetings with the development team and users to ensure that everyone understands the business need for the application. In this process, we also assess whether the business could benefit from change to provide a more efficient or economical set of procedures. Keeping the technical staff and users in step helps ensure the development of a computer system that will be flexible and meet the business needs of the organization. People People are the key ingedient to being successful with these development projects. The graphical tools available today are far less important than the human resources that are responsible for gluing the pieces together and making it work. Roger Lurie Principal Support Systems Analyst Information Resources Management Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287-0101 602/965-4433 roger.lurie#064;asu.edu ###