Collection as the Cornerstone of Presented by Sara Bishop, Administrative Systems Development West Virginia University Office of Information Technology at the 8th International Symposium on Electronic Theses & Dissertations

September 28, Topics of Discussion  Brief History  Why the Struts Framework?  Parallel Initiatives  Birth of  Viability & Lessons Learned

September 28, Brief History  2 nd institution to implement required ETDs  Migrated to Oracle platform 2003  Most critical enhancements:  Improved data quality & consistency  Enabled secure submissions & access worldwide  User friendly & automated collection maintenance functions

September 28, Why the Struts Framework?  MVC-based Apache open source framework  Combines use of JSPs & Java Servlets  Separates the user interface from content generation & is platform independent  Data transfer via Data Transfer Objects (DTO)

September 28, Data Transfer Objects  Extend JSPs with custom tag libraries  Move functionality from JSP pages to tag implementation classes  Pass entire ActionForm to DTO  Username & password validation  Browsing of collections

September 28, Decision Highlights  Platform independence  Enhanced performance  Separation of logic from display  Ease of code maintenance  Extensibility & ease of use

September 28, Parallel Initiatives  Organization-wide Budget reductions  Content Accessibility  Application Security Risk Assessment Initiative

September 28, Content Accessibility  World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Accessibility Guidelines  Design without nested tables  Design with summary fields  Access keys with each HTML button  Specialized style sheets

September 28, Application Security “…information resources are vital assets requiring protection commensurate with their value…must be actively managed to ensure the continued confidentiality, integrity and availability of these resources”.

September 28, App Security Safeguards  Include input validation everywhere  Test for incorrect and correct user behavior  Know who is accessing the application data  Team with your security people

September 28, Birth of Electronic Institutional Document Repository “…to collect, archive, & provide access to University’s scholarly research output.” Success of the eTD Collection lead to additions:  eHT (electronic Honors Theses)  eSRA (electronic Scholarly Resources Archive)

September 28, Viability & Lessons Learned  WVU in-house system is market competitive  Java development tools are versatile  Incorporate security checklist as part of the development cycle  Consider accessibility due to global audience  Stay abreast of current trend & technologies

September 28, The goal of any development project should always be to deliver the most secure and best quality product possible and to assume pride in the responsibility of maintaining that product while keeping pace with technology.

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