CS190 Project Requirements Proposal
Lisa Cozzens (ljc)
February 2, 2000

1. Background

1.1. Overview 

With Internet access becoming nearly ubiquitous among college students,
more and more universities are moving to put student information on the
Web. For example, students at the University of Pennsylvania can check
what classes they're registered for and access a summary of their current
student bill. Students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology can update
their biographic record (e.g. their home address) and see information on
their student loans. Students at Carnegie Mellon University can actually
register for classes online. 

This project will implement a secure Web-based interface to the various
databases of student information that a university maintains, allowing
students to access and update the information contained in these
databases. Its primary aim is to reduce the necessity of physically going
to the registrar's office. It might also branch out into other parts of
the university that keep information on students, such as the financial
aid office.

1.2. Target Users

This project is aimed at universities and other educational institutions
that are not yet as well-connected as Penn, MIT, and CMU but which want to
allow their students access to personal information via the Web. The Web
interface itself will be used by the students of these universities. Brown
University would be one obvious target user, but the system should be
general enough to be used at any university.

2. Project Requirements

2.1. Functional requirements
Since I am a target user, being a college student myself, I came up
requirements for the project by asking myself what I would like to see in
a system like this. I also asked some of my friends, also college
students, to make sure I didn't leave anything out. Following is what we
came up with:

* Access to registration information (what courses a student is currently
signed up for, and whether the courses are being taken ABC/NC or S/NC).
Priority: high
* Create a printable weekly schedule showing when a student's classes
meet. Priority: mid
* Ability to view other student information, such as home address.
Priority: mid
* Ability to update this student information. Priority: mid-low
* Access to student grades for past semesters. Priority: high
* Ability to order transcripts. Priority: low
* Online course registration. Priority: mid. This involves a couple of
different things, not all of which need to be implemented for the system
to be useful:
  - course pre-registration
  - adding, dropping, changing sections of, or changing grade options of a
course
  - filing permission for a course
  - filing for an incomplete
* Online concentration declaration. Priority: mid
* Access to financial information, such as student bills and loans.
Priority: mid-low
* Easy-to-use UNIX-based administration tools. For example, it should be
easy for administrators to link an existing database into the program so
that the information contained in that database is accessible via the Web.
Priority: high
* Easy-to-use Web-based interface that is accessible even to
novice computer users. Priority: high
* Security system to ensure that this information is available only to the
student. Priority: high
* Fast system, so that students do not have to spend too long waiting for
screens to appear. Priority: high
* Reliable system that requires a minimum of maintenance. Anyone who has
tried to access BOCA the night before classes start only to discover that
it's down knows why this is important. Priority: high

2.2. Hardware and OS Requirements
The program itself must run on Solaris on the UltraSparcs in the Sun Lab.

The Web-based interface must be accessible by a wide variety of users,
running different browsers and different operating systems. At the very
least, it should be usable in Netscape Navigator 3.0+ and Microsoft
Internet Explorer 3.0+, as well as text-based browsers such as Lynx. It
should also be accessible to people with disabilities. The Web-based
interface will require a TCP/IP connection to the Internet.

2.3. Testing
The information given by the system can be compared to information
available through other means to ensure that it's accurate. For example,
the grades that the system says a student has gotten can be compared to
the grades entered in the official grades database.  The project can also
be tested on users at Brown to evaluate whether it meets the ease of use
and performance requirements. We can have a lot of users try to access the
system simultaneously to see if it can hold up under a heavy load.