1. 4742: Interconnectivity and Colleague David Lane – Oakland CC Jeff Butera – Hampshire College

2. Interconnectivity and Colleague Main Entry: in·ter·con·nect Pronunciation: \in-tər-kə-nekt\ Function: verb Date: 1865 transitive verb : to connect with one another intransitive verb : to be or become mutually connected

3. Interconnectivity and Colleague We all have Colleague. We all have other stuff. How does other stuff interface with Colleague? Quite nicely, thank you.

4. Interconnectivity and Colleague – NOT Realtime Flat file transfer using scheduled batch jobs to import/export date Works well for low-need applications –Bookstore charges –Public Safety charges –Anything where periodic batch process is OK –Daily, weekly, etc.

5. Interconnectivity and Colleague – Almost Realtime Flat file transfer, just as previous. Use ssh/rsh to execute batch process remotely. Works well with things you want relatively quickly, but don’t truly need to be realtime. Overhead of ssh connection, starting udt won’t fly with realtime.

6. Interconnectivity and Colleague – Realtime! (RTFM) ODBC - requires normalization of data, performance poor UCI - C (somewhat ODBC, somewhat not) InterCall - C/C++ Unibasic Sockets – anything! Uniobjects for Java – Java UniOLEDB - MS OLEDB Uniobjects for.NET -.NET

7. Interconnectivity and Colleague – Hampshire Examples Most Hampshire connections are via web pages/sites. Some command line. Used a homegrown web service for two years.

8. Interconnectivity and Colleague – InterCall Example InterCall has commands to do various tasks: – Select records – Read records – Write records – Call subroutines – Call programs (batch processes) KISS – Wrote one subroutine which does all of above!

9. Interconnectivity and Colleague – InterCall Example C program/InterCall Unidata connection (unirpc) Master subroutine invoked Master subroutine calls other subrs for work Master subroutine returns data C program passes data back

10. Interconnectivity and Colleague – InterCall Example Open a session: session_id=ic_opensession(server, username, password, account, &code, NULL); Call a subroutine: ic_subcall(subname,&subname_len, &code, &numargs, &arg[0], &arg[1],...); Close the session: ic_quitall(&code);

11. Interconnectivity and Colleague – Hampshire Websites Wrote Perl API using a lightweight C program with InterCall. 1.Perl calls C program. 2.C program connects to Unidata subroutine. 3.Unidata subroutine does work. 4.Returns data to C program. 5.C program passes back to Perl.

12. Interconnectivity and Colleague – Hampshire Examples NERDug (www.NERDug.org) HR Job Application (in progress) Student Application IT Helpdesk (Ticket/Bug) Tracking Course Evaluations Survey for Environmental Committee Admin Portal (adsys.hampshire.edu) Employment Check (command line)

13. Interconnectivity and Colleague – Summary You CAN interconnect other stuff! You CAN interface with Unidata! If the shoe fits – wear it! Find the tool(s) that match your talent. Newton's First Law of Motion I’ve been riding InterCall for 7+ years!