I. Local Resources and Services

The principal strategy for our campus computing plan is to place the control of computing power into the hands of the ultimate user (the end-user). This strategy not only recognizes the prevailing trends in industry and university computing, it acknowledges the need to develop and support the personal skills and effectiveness of our students, faculty, staff and administrators. Faculty will be able to use their new skills and resources to improve their instructional and research activities, and most users will become more self-reliant in meeting their own computing needs. Furthermore, it will provide individuals and departments with greater control over their time, assist them in automating highly routine tasks and allow innovative new services and creativity to flourish.

Desktop Computers

Desktop resources will play a pivotal role in establishing our campus computer users, and their desktops, as "the center of a network universe". These resources will include a personal computer, connections to the campus/departmental network, and a set of desktop productivity tools which include a wordprocessor, a spreadsheet, a database management application (or a "front-end" application to a departmental and/or centralized database system) and data-communications software. These resources must be selected on the basis of fulfilling our overall campus computing strategy while meeting those standards established by our campus computing hardware and software policies. While cost will always be a limiting factor, we cannot afford to invest in technology which is not flexible nor powerful enough to grow with our evolving skills, interests and capabilities.

Goals:

To provide a desktop computer to every administrator, faculty and staff member requesting one

To equip each desktop computer with those personal productivity tools described above

To connect each desktop computer to departmental/campus network services

Departmentally-Based Services

In order to provide as much local access and control as possible over computing resources and services, departmental servers (file servers, print servers, communications servers) will be established to support, depending upon size, individual or grouped, academic and administrative departments. This same model will also apply to student computing centers and classrooms which share many, if not most, of the same needs as academic and administrative departments. In addition to creating a robust computing environment where end-users can gain access to the resources they need when they need them, departmentally-based servers offer the following benefits:

1. They allow us to minimize the cost of providing each individual user with expensive resources by giving them the means through the LAN to share software, local databases, large data storage areas and printing services.

2. They establish the individual's department, where professional and interpersonal working relationships already exist, as the first level of support and service.

3. They build the necessary infrastructure to support a distributed computing environment that will provide users with the means to integrate and process information from any campus source.

4. They provide our campus with a computing environment robust enough to minimize user downtime, yet flexible enough to meet our evolving skills, interests and capabilities.

Departmentally-based services on our campus will include a file server, large shared storage capacity (300 Mb or more), specialized application software appropriate to the needs of the users, and access to laser printing. Computer resources and services available through departmental servers will be designed in such a way that they will be logical extensions of the desktop computing environment already familiar to the end-user. That is, departmentally-based resources and services for desktop computers will look like, and work like, any other resource and service that end-users have become accustomed to using on their own desktop computer. Departmental servers will be managed by a designated Departmental LAN Manager (see Departmental LAN Manger under Staffing).

Goals:

To establish departmental servers with service for an average of 25 end-users within a given department or set of offices/departments

To equip departmental servers as described above

Local Databases

Local databases are created whenever an end-user (an individual or department) establishes a structured set of data records which can be queried, updated and produce reports. The source of the data that comprises a local database may include subsets of centralized databases, locally generated data or a combination of both. These databases may be shared within a department or used exclusively by an individual. Local databases can be maintained by the end-user(s), and/or routinely updated automatically from centrally-managed databases. However, as with centralized databases, each local database will require a database "manager", someone who assumes responsibility for the accuracy and currency of the data. The delegation of that responsibility should be determined by the primary users of the database.

Because Potsdam College has committed the development of it core administrative databases to ORACLE(TM), it will be important to encourage and support end-users in developing and establishing local databases which are ORACLE(TM)-compatible. Establishing this standard will be imperative if we are to realize our goal of achieving a truly integrated information environment on campus.

Goals:

To establish ORACLE(TM) compatibility as the campus database development standard for all database management systems maintained on campus

To promote and support the use of ORACLE(TM), where appropriate

To develop the necessary processes and procedures for local databases to be automatically and routinely updated by centralized databases

To designate a database manager for each local database



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Document prepared by Robert Jewett. Email: jewettrj@potsdam.edu