OpenACS applications at the UCLA School of Medicine

Avni Khatri

Computing Technologies Research Lab

Overview• History and background of CTRL• OpenACS @ UCLA

– Faculty Database• Problem, requirements, design

– Weekly Message Digest• Problem, requirements, design

– Calendar of Events• Problem, requirements, design

– Room Reservation• Problem, requirements, design

• Issues – Performance under load– Permissions & request processor– Single sign on– Customizations

Background

• Since 1995, NaviServer 1.0.

• Illustra, Solid, Sybase, now Oracle.

• Research data collection, management, and reporting applications.

• Infrastructure applications at School of Medicine: Shared Resources, school and department web sites, etc.

Faculty Database

• Too many places where information needed to be updated.• Need for single point of management.• Flexible heterogeneous presentations (for each departments,

divisions, center, institute, etc.)• Support distributed administration (departments can manage

their faculty, etc).• Marketing tool.

FDB Design• Uses OpenACS

– objects & permissions– Users, persons, parties and groups

• Research data include:– Publications– Lay and Technical Research Interest statements– Title, degrees, awards, affiliations– Contact data

• Other features:– Data source for NIH & NSF Bio-sketch builder

Data Model

FDB

Example Query select personnel_id,

first_names,

last_name

from inst_personnel psnl,

persons p

where p.person_id = psnl.personnel_id

and (psnl.status_id is null

or psnl.status_id in

(category.lookup('//Personnel Status//Active'),

category.lookup('//Personnel Status//Accepting Patients')))

and (psnl.start_date is null or psnl.start_date < sysdate)

and (psnl.end_date is null or psnl.end_date > sysdate)

and exists (select 1 from vw_group_member_map elms where exists (select 1 from acs_rels rels where rels.rel_type = 'subsite_for_party_rel' and rels.object_id_one = :subsite_id and rels.object_id_two = elms.ancestor_id) and elms.child_id = p.person_id )

order by last_name_initial, last_name, first_names

DRC

Digest - Problem

WMD - Solution

• Person at UCLA wishes to add an item to the Weekly Message Digest.

Weekly Message Digest

Technical Details

QuickTime™ and aTIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor

are needed to see this picture.

Implementation Strategy• Weekly email digests to drive

traffic to other services.

• Single sign-on to several applications:– FDB

– Room Reservations

– Calendars of Events

– NIH Bio sketch builder

– more…

Calendar Engine

Calendars of Events• Central clearinghouse of

DGSOM events.• Accept DGSOM

community postings.• Support import into desktop

calendars (Outlook & iCal).• Provide notification options

(email).• Provide “pull” options

(RSS).

Room Reservations Online

• Common solution to room reservation.

• Supports local control and autonomy.

• Provide new capabilities.

Room Reservations Online

• Browse rooms by characteristics.

• Search by specific requirements.

• Submit room reservation request.

• Administration of rooms.

• Support for “skins”

Issues

• Performance - permissions & request processor.

• Performance - AOLServer tuning.

• Single sign on

• Customizations