The NVAO (Dutch-Flemish Accreditation Organisation) was looking for a system that could support its activities as an education accreditation body. West quickly mastered the company process of this client and delivered a system on time and within budget.
| Market: | Semi-government |
|---|---|
| Technology: | Java, Xelion, Oracle |
| Brochure: |  |
As a consequence of EU legislation on the harmonisation of education, all member states must set up a body that is given the task of assessing the standards of higher education courses. The aim of this is to facilitate comparisons of education courses within the Union in an objective manner. For the Netherlands and the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium, this is the NVAO.
West advised the NVAO to use Xelion Software for the construction of the software system, which is an existing toolkit for building complex administrative systems. The advantages of this system were that the first version of the accreditation system could be realised quickly and that the NVAO organisation could also use the existing standard modules of the Xelion Software.
The construction of the software system was part of a total project that consisted of a number of components, including the migration from a Macintosh network to a Windows network. A database replication facility for archiving the business-critical data was also part of the project.
West implemented the accreditation module in accordance with the time boxing principle, which enabled West to guarantee the NVAO a fixed lead time with budget control.
Since its delivery, the application has run on the Xelion Software application server. West also provides second-line support, consisting of remote machine management, user administration and creation, local network administration and the installation of new releases of Xelion Software.
Xelion Software is an object-oriented toolkit for building complex administrative applications. These applications are written in Java on a highly abstract level using "business rules". This makes it possible to build consecutive versions of an application within a short period of time. A number of standard applications such as an address book, e-mail, a diary and time registration are also available. Xelion Software uses the Enterprise Edition Oracle database.
Xelion Software is distinguished by object orientation and cross relations that are made between objects. Object orientation enables the reality to be depicted well on the data model and the objects are then ordered by cross linking (for instance between a personal object and an organisational object, in order to indicate that a certain person works for a certain organisation). This automatically creates a meaningful classification, without the need for the data to be arranged.
The Xelion application runs as a Java client on the PCs of end users. Desktop PCs therefore only need limited maintenance. You only need a web browser to access the application the first time. The Java client communicates with the server via CORBA. This approach makes it possible to work from a distance with a broadband internet connection.
NVAO now owns a sophisticated system for processing accreditation requests. The entire workflow - from the moment the first letter arrives, via the assessment round and the decision of the board, to the posting of the letter with the decision of the board and the publication of the decision on the website - is supported by the accreditation application.
As it was not fully known when the application was being built how the completion of the accreditations would occur in practice, a flexible approach was essential. It also had to be possible and easy to make changes to the system after the first version had been delivered. Xelion Software offers a high level of freedom in this respect.