NOTE FOR EDITOR: Evaluation Of Utilizing Service Oriented Architecture As A Suitable Solution To Align University Management Information Systems And Learning Management Systems

Abstract

To help universities achieve their goals, it is important to align managerial functionalities side by side with educational aspects. Universities consume University Management Information Systems (UMIS) to handle managerial aspects as they do with Learning Management Systems (LMS) to achieve learning objectives. UMIS advances LMS by decades and has reached stable and mature consistency level. LMS is the newly acquired solution in Universities; compared to UMIS, and so adopting LMSs in universities can be achieved via three different deployment approaches. First approach believes in LMS ability to replace UMIS and performing its functionalities. Second approach presents the idea of extending UMIS to include LMS functionalities. Third approach arises from the shortages of the two proposed approaches and present integration between both as the appropriate deployment approach. Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a design pattern that can be used as a suitable architectural solution to align UMIS and LMS. SOA can be utilized in universities to overcome some of information systems’ challenges like the integration between UMIS and LMS. This paper presents the current situation at Mansoura University; Egypt, presents integration as the most suitable solution, and evaluates three different implementation techniques: Dynamic Query, Stored Procedure, and Web services. Evaluation concludes that though SOA enhanced many different aspects of both UMIS and LMS; and consequently university overall. It is not recommended to adopt SOA via Web services as the building unit of the system, but as the interdisciplinary interface between systems.