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Mule beats Oracle, others for integrating with Oracle ERP
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Education
Applicable Functions
- Business Operation
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Remote Asset Management
Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
The University of the Witwatersrand, one of South Africa's premier research universities, was faced with a required migration of their central student system, the most important system in the university. The university had implemented an Oracle-based Student System as part of a large Oracle ERP deployment. However, in 2007, the university received a notice from Oracle that their existing student system would be reaching end of life in 2013. After an evaluation of alternatives, the university decided upon Oracle’s PeopleSoft CampusSolutions as their new student system. To facilitate the move from the old Oracle system to Campus Solutions, CNS needed to split the Student and HR systems, which ran in one large Oracle instance. This required additional integration between the two Oracle products, Campus Solutions and other ancillary systems. Integration would be key to making the transition seamless.
About The Customer
The University of the Witwatersrand, commonly known as Wits University, is one of South Africa's premier research universities. With over 30,000 active students at any time, and over 4,000 staff members, it is also one of the largest. The records of these students as well as historical records for alumni are managed by a central student system operated by the Computer Network Services (CNS) office of the university. CNS also develops, supports and maintains custom applications for all departments of the university including many that interface to the student system. The Wits student system performs many critical functions and has many touch points. The system maintains all student records including applicant data, offers of admissions, academic history, financial aid, graduation records, and letters and correspondences with students. Approximately 500 users directly access the student system.
The Solution
The university selected Mule ESB to decouple components and provide a reliable integration framework through the migration and beyond. Mule ESB was used as a central integration platform to integrate a number of systems with the existing Oracle ERP implementation. For example, it is used for transactional systems such as fees and receipting where it posts transaction on a queue and asynchronously empties this queue to the Oracle ERP system. It also manages credit and debit transactions, splitting credits from debits and delivering each to a different place. Outside of ERP-related use cases, Mule is also used for batch jobs, moving text files, and other uses within the university. Given the university’s positive experience with Mule, it was immediately a strong candidate for consideration as the integration layer for the migration project. Nonetheless, upon kicking off the new project in September 2010, CNS conducted an extensive evaluation of several alternatives. Ultimately Mule was selected as the best alternative.
Operational Impact
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