1. Building a production quality Rice Application at SJDC
Kuali Days VI, Chicago
Christopher Kirschenman – San Joaquin Delta
Anthony Potts - rSmart

2. About San Joaquin Delta College
Large community college in Stockton, CA ~13,000 Students per semester ~1,000 employees Currently 6 developers (2 primarily Java) Developed Student and HR System in Smalltalk 2

3. About rSmart
Provider of support and services for OSS in higher education
Sakai CLE
Kuali Financials
Kuali Rice
Kuali KRA (soon)
Kuali Student (not so soon)
Founding Partner of Kuali
Founding partner of Open Source Portfolio Initiative
Sakai Partner and board member 3

4. The Problem Current process highly manual
Thousands of timesheets printed each month
Errors common, lost papers, etc
Workflow goes through single person (single point of failure!) 4

5. Previously Attempted Solution
Kronos:
Many more features than required
Chosen for the wrong reason
Hard to integrate with existing system
Project was passed around until it withered 5

6. Replicate current process (simplify!)
Requirements
Replicate current process (simplify!)
Integrate with homegrown SIS/HR system
Integrate with CAS / LDAP
Implement workflow 6

7. Rice Framework Features
Maintenance Documents
Transactional Documents
Workflow
Web Services
Quartz batch processes 7

8. Maintenance Documents
XML-based
Used for maintaining individual business objects
Fully rules and workflow capable
No HTML or JSP page 8

9. <dictionaryEntry> <maintenanceDocument> <businessObjectClass>org.kuali.contrib.timekeeping.bo.TimecardType</businessObjectClass> <maintainableClass>org.kuali.core.maintenance.KualiMaintainableImpl</maintainableClass> <documentAuthorizerClass>org.kuali.core.document.authorization.MaintenanceDocumentAuthorizerBase</documentAuthorizerClass> <authorizations> <authorization action="initiate"> <workgroups> <workgroup>TIMEKEEPING_DEFAULT</workgroup> </workgroups> </authorization> </authorizations> <documentTypeName>TimecardTypeMaintenanceDocument</documentTypeName> <label>Timecard Type Maintenance Document</label> <maintainableSections> <maintainableSection title="Edit TimecardType"> <maintainableItems> <maintainableField name="name" required="true" /> <maintainableField name="description" required="true" /> </maintainableItems> </maintainableSection> </maintainableSections> </maintenanceDocument> </dictionaryEntry> 9

10. Transactional Documents
Transient documents that may modify one or more business objects
More coding than Maintenance Documents
Question framework
Extremely capable = potential for complexity 10

11. BSF:Groovy -> Java -> Web Service
Workflow
Keep it simple
Easy to over engineer
BSF:Groovy -> Java -> Web Service 11

12. Document XML
<routePaths> <routePath> <start name="Adhoc Routing" nextNode="Assignment Manager Approval" /> <requests name="Assignment Manager Approval" nextNode="Assignment Supervisor Approval" /> <requests name="Assignment Supervisor Approval" /> </routePath> </routePaths> <routeNodes> <start name="Adhoc Routing"> <activationType>S</activationType> <mandatoryRoute>false</mandatoryRoute> <finalApproval>false</finalApproval> </start> <requests name="Assignment Manager Approval"> <ruleSelector>Named</ruleSelector> <ruleName>AssignmentManagerApproval</ruleName> </requests> <requests name="Assignment Supervisor Approval"> <ruleName>AssignmentSupervisorApproval</ruleName> </routeNodes> 12

13. Rule XML
<rule> <name>AssignmentManagerApproval</name> <documentType>TimekeepingDocument</documentType> <description>This rule requires an approval by manager</description> <expression type="BSF:groovy"> import org.kuali.contrib.timekeeping.workflow.TimekeepingWorkflowUtils; return TKWorkflowUtils.constructManagerApproval(routeContext, rule); </expression> </rule> 13

14. Real-time integration
Direct Access to legacy database through BOs
Database schema extremely limited
permissions kept to a minimum, read-only
Access to business logic through web services
Issues:
Legacy database not normalized
Database not necessarily accurate
Security 14

15. Take advantage of idle servers Timecard Initialization Notification
Batch Integration
Nightly Jobs
Take advantage of idle servers
Timecard Initialization
Notification
Finalization 15

16. Deployment Choice Embedded Rice Simple Java access to Rice functions
Separate database for Rice
Minimize number of tables added to application database
Faster development cycle
Option to move to thin client at later date 16

17. Timecard Application Rice Server (future) Legacy SIS/HR System KNS KEW
Web Services
Legacy SIS/HR System
KNS
KEW
Legacy DB
Rice DB 17

18. Future Plans for Rice at Delta
Bringing on Kuali Financial and eventually Kuali Student
Parts of Rice moved from embedded to standalone
Legacy application integration with standalone rice 18

19. Timecard Application Future
Source code going to be released to community
Another sample application for Rice
Community involvement should result in a better product over time. 19