SunGard Higher Education User Experience Strategy: Technical

1. SunGard Higher Education User Experience Strategy: Technical Bob Rullo; SunGard Higher Education GM User Experience

2. Agenda • User Experience Strategy • UI Technologies and Preparation • Adobe Flex Deep Dive • Questions and Answers

3. User Experience Strategy – Goals • Create a consistent,streamlined,seamless and personalized user experience • Provide rich interactions, information and input in a relevant context • Create a more efficient, more effective and more desirable user experience

4. User Experience Strategy – Key Concepts • Apply to new products and enhancements • Evolve existing User Interfaces • Move from a transaction orientation to user-centric and process orientation • Provide global representation of user responsibilities and activities • Guide users through personalized processes, not just give them a big box of tools • Simplify and provide more efficient navigation • Utilize current, state-of-the-art and emerging UI technologies

5. Banner Enrollment Management - 2008

6. Banner Travel and Expense Management - 2008

7. User Experience Transformation – State-of-the-Art and Emerging Technologies • Use multiple UI technologies in “fit-for-purpose” approach • Apply agile approach to assess value and implementation of current and emerging technologies • Technologies include: • Web 2.0 and Rich Internet Application (RIA) technologies including Adobe Flex • Dynamic HTML (AJAX, JavaScript, CSS..) • MS Office Integration • Electronic Forms

8. UI Technologies and Preparation

9. UI Technologies • What RIA technologies will SunGard Higher Education be using in future releases? • Adobe Flex • Already delivered • Baseline - Banner 8.1 Effort Certification and Labor Redistribution • Add on - Banner EM Recruiting and Admissions Relationships, Banner 8.1 Travel and Expense • On the horizon • Improved registration functionality • Luminis Platform 5 use when appropriate • HTML with AJAX • Provide rich portlets using robust JavaScript libraries • Examples: jQuery, Prototype, etc. • Improve HTML usage for more CSS and less table based design

10. Application Developers • Object Oriented Programming • Web Services (SOAP and REST) • Adobe Flex (Action Script and MXML) Preparing for User Interface Change: End Users • End Users • No additional preparation necessary • Goal is to have zero learning curve interface • Designers • CSS • Web standard layout methods (table-less) • Basic understanding of Adobe Flex and Flash • For rich user experience, JavaScript and Ajax • Portal Developers • Portlet Specification – JSR 168 • HTML with JavaScript libraries

11. Preparing for User Interface Change: Designers • End Users • No additional preparation necessary • Goal is to have zero learning curve interface • Designers • CSS • Web standard layout methods (table-less) • Basic understanding of Adobe Flex and Flash • For rich user experience, JavaScript and Ajax • Application Developers • Object Oriented Programming • Web Services (SOAP and REST) • Adobe Flex (Action Script and MXML) • Portal Developers • Portlet Specification – JSR 168 • HTML with JavaScript libraries

12. Preparing for User Interface Change: Application Developers • End Users • No additional preparation necessary • Goal is to have zero learning curve interface • Designers • CSS • Web standard layout methods (table-less) • Basic understanding of Adobe Flex and Flash • For rich user experience, JavaScript and Ajax • Application Developers • Object Oriented Programming • Web Services (SOAP and REST) • Adobe Flex (Action Script and MXML) • Portal Developers • Portlet Specification – JSR 168 • HTML with JavaScript libraries

13. Preparing for User Interface Change: Portal Developers • End Users • No additional preparation necessary • Goal is to have zero learning curve interface • Designers • CSS • Web standard layout methods (table-less) • Basic understanding of Adobe Flex and Flash • For rich user experience, JavaScript and Ajax • Application Developers • Object Oriented Programming • Web Services (SOAP and REST) • Adobe Flex (Action Script and MXML) • Portal Developers • Portlet Specification – JSR 168 • HTML with JavaScript libraries

14. Adobe Flex Deep Dive

15. Adobe Flex • From Adobe: Highly productive, free open source framework for building and maintaining expressive web applications that deploy consistently on all major browsers, desktops, and operating systems • Provides RAD like development experience through robust IDE • Removes need for browser incompatibility hacks • Adobe Flash Player is ubiquitous

16. Is Adobe Flex a language? • No, Adobe Flex is a collection of technologies primarily supported by two languages • MXML – Tag based language (think HTML) • ActionScript - Scripting language based on ECMAScript (think JavaScript with data types) • The output from compiling Flex based application is a SWF file. • Runs on Flash Player 9+ • Adobe Flex applications require the Adobe Flash Player • 98.9% have Flash 9+ installed

17. Flex and SOA Adobe Flash Player Database Application Server Adobe Flex Application Client Side Server Side

18. Flex Data Access • Flex provides a variety of interfaces for enabling Flex based applications • Servers can be Java, .Net, PHP, Ruby, ColdFusion or any other server side technologies. • These interfaces differ primarily in terms of how the data is passed over HTTP.

19. Flex Data Access: Using Web Services • REST-style web services • The ‘HTTPService’ component is used to communicate with a server implementation that is expecting a HTTP POST or GET request. • Easier way to access server resources without a more formalized API such as those provided by SOAP compliant web services. • SOAP compliant web services • The ‘WebService’ component is used to communicate with the server implementation. Flex applications can interact with web services that define their interfaces in a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) document.

20. Flex Data Access: Using Remote Objects • Remote object services allow access to business logic directly in its native format rather than formatting it as XML, as required with REST and SOAP web services. • Flex’s ‘RemoteObject’ component • Data is passed between the Flex application and the server implementation in the binary Action Script Message Format (AMF).

21. Flex Data Access: Which method should I chose? • REST/SOAP services having well established standards, can be written once and used from most of the systems, not just Flex applications. • However, Can be heavy across the wire (especially SOAP is often very verbose), which can result in higher client-side memory requirements and processing time. • Remote Objects use serialized COMPRESSED data With remote object services with data exchanges still happening over HTTP(S) • Remote object services offer automatic conversion between Action Script and the Java objects (or another language).

22. Flex Data Access: Recommendations? • It truly depends • If you intend to support multiple clients, ensuring there are Web Service end points is desirable. • If you are sharing large amounts of data Remote Objects make a lot of sense. • Recommendations • BlazeDS – Open Source and Free Java Remoting • Enables developers to connect to back-end distributed data and push data in real-time to Adobe Flex and Adobe AIR applications for more responsive rich Internet application (RIA) experiences. http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/BlazeDS

23. Flex Data Access: Methods SunGard Higher Education Used • Remote Objects • Banner Enrollment Management Recruiting and Admissions Recruiting • Banner Travel and Expense used Remote Objects. • SOAP Web services • Banner Flexible Registration • REST-style Web Services • Expect to have RESTful based applications in the future

24. Server Side Suggestions • Most Flex Based SunGard Higher Education Applications are using Java on the server side using Spring (http://www.springsource.org/) • Spring BlazeDS Integration Home • Makes it easier to build Spring-powered Rich Internet Applications using Adobe Flex as the front-end client. • http://www.springsource.org/spring-flex

25. Developing Flex Applications • Recommended Tools • Adobe Flex Builder 3 ProNote: Available for free to all education customers. This includes all students, faculty and staff of eligible education institutions https://freeriatools.adobe.com/flexNote: Adobe Flex Builder 3 is becoming Adobe Flash Builder 4 • Recommended Skill Set • Object Oriented Programming • Web Services (SOAP and REST) • Action Script and MXML • Similar to JavaScript and HTML • CSS • Java experience helps, but not required

26. Developing Flex Applications: What version should I use? • It depends • If you are building a solution right now, Flex 3. • 3-6 months, start with Flex 4 Beta and prepare to upgrade to GA

27. How long should I plan on training people on Flex? • SunGard Higher Education had predominantly PL/SQL and Oracle Forms developers. • On average, it took approximately 2 months to come up to speed on Adobe Flex and be productive. • Note: Some made it, some didn’t

28. Are Flex applications accessible? • Yes • Adobe ships 28 accessible components. • All components provide ability to introduce ‘accessible’ classes. • Tested with JAWS Screen Reader • Go to http://www.adobe.com/accessibility/products/flex/overview.html for more information.

29. Adobe Flex Information • Flex Blog Aggregator – Must see! • http://www.flex.org • Tour de Flex • http://flex.org/tour

30. Adobe Flex Training • Designer/Web Developer • You: Little or no experience with programming • Goal: Learn to build and customize Flex applications • Programmer • You: Experience with object oriented programming • Goal: Learn to build and architect Flex applications • Manager • You: A program or product manager • Goal: Familiarize yourself with Flex and Flex projects • Architect • You: Familiar with many web technologies and platforms • Goal: Evaluate Flex for your company needs http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/learn

31. Thank You! Robert Rullo SunGard Higher Education GM of User Experience robert.rullo@sungardhe.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/rrullo