Seminole County Public School District Relies on Progress® OpenEdge® to Create an Ideal Information Platform for 70 Educational Institutions
Challenge
Faced with an extensive infrastructure where running multiple applications created problems, the Seminole County Public School District wanted to utilize a new educational database management system and replication solution.
Solution
Implement new online enrollment application with Skyward, powered by Progress® OpenEdge® and utilize OpenEdge Pro2 for database replication.
Result
Saves 10-12 hours a week from management and troubleshooting; enables IT to focus on more time-sensitive and strategic tasks; provides students and parents complete visibility into student progress and key documents.Full Story
Challenge
The Seminole County Public School District consists of 37 elementary schools, 12 middle schools, nine high schools, six special education centers, a virtual school and four charter schools. The district required a reliable infrastructure that could keep things running smoothly for administrators, teachers, students, and parents.
Supporting the backend systems is both mission-critical and complex, with multiple stakeholders and a large IT environment. Thomas Condo, Information Systems Operations Supervisor and Roger Baker, DBA experienced first-hand the challenges with the Seminole County School District's backend systems.
For example, they would encounter issues running applications simultaneously. When two reporting and billing applications needed to pull information directly from the district's databases at the same time, the applications would malfunction or crash.
In need of a solution for its server and database problems, Condo, Baker, and their team began looking into the education information platform, Skyward, powered by Progress® OpenEdge®, along with Progress® OpenEdge® Pro2™, a data replication solution.
Replicating to a SQL database (with Pro2 replication), enabling that particular server to be the one the other applications tap into took the load off of our student production and worked flawlessly. Honestly, it kind of saved our bacon.
Tom Condo
Supervisor, I.S. Operations at Seminole County Public Schools
Solution
Working with Skyward and the Progress OpenEdge team, Condo and Baker deployed their new platform. One of their first tasks was reproducing a SQL database to help stabilize the systems and efficiently pull student information.
"Replicating to a SQL database (with Pro2 replication), enabling that particular server to be the one the other applications tap into took the load off of our student production and worked flawlessly. Honestly, it kind of saved our bacon."
Condo and Baker find tremendous value in the OpenEdge administrative dashboard, which serves as a means of communication whenever database errors occur. Seminole County programmers now have the tools to create customized views in the SQL server.
The team uses a provided graphic user interface (GUI) to see the database's activity. But, in this dashboard, both Baker and Condo can create alerts and reports regarding the status of a system or database. Condo and Baker feel at ease knowing the system is functioning properly.
Result
Because of the improvement of the database and better overall user experience, Condo describes how positive the reception is from the Seminole County stakeholders.
And this not only goes for both the educators and students, but for parents and school officials too. Parents of students can interact with the Skyward mobile app and access educational resources. They can see if their children have yet to complete any assignments or miss school days. There is even an option for parents in the Seminole School District to receive push notifications regarding a student's academic performance. School officials enjoy seeing real-time data that they can share with state government officials to accurately represent their district.
For over a decade, the system and IT administrators at Seminole County Public School District have been happy to use Skyward and OpenEdge. Condo intends to use OpenEdge Pro2 in new ways, by looking into using other types of applications in conjunction with the student system or one of many systems that are located on the database.
"When we do our major releases at least three times a year, I must work with a Progress programmer to make some replication changes for the [OpenEdge] Pro2 SQL and it's just easy to work with them," Baker compliments. "They're very efficient in what they do and know the product well."
Further, the team has also been successful with other Progress products, including Progress® Kemp® LoadMaster® (for secure load balancing) and Progress® WhatsUp® Gold (for network monitoring), reinforcing the value Progress is able to deliver to the Seminole County Public School system on a broad scale.
When we do our major releases at least three times a year, I must work with a Progress programmer to make some replication changes for the [OpenEdge] Pro2 SQL and it's just easy to work with them. They're very efficient in what they do and know the product well.
Roger Baker
DBA at Seminole County Public Schools