
CSN News




WebFOCUS
Two campuses of the University of Nebraska, the University of Nebraska - Lincoln and the University
of Nebraska - Omaha, are currently involved in a project to migrate their Student Information
System reporting environment from mainframe FOCUS to WebFOCUS, both products from Information Builders Inc.
WebFOCUS is a new web-based enterprise data access and reporting system which
allows access to information, regardless of hardware platforms, database
structures or application programs. The campuses will be using several WebFOCUS
tools including Power Reporter, which allows developers to emulate the mainframe
environment on their local machine and modify their own code as necessary. This
gives users more report building options, but the program is harder to learn how
to use. They will also be using the Managed Reporting Environment, which is a
web-based product that is quicker to get started using. These products both
allow for greater flexibility in the distribution of reports, which can now be
generated in several different applications and distributed via email or
published over the Internet.
Both campuses are working with CSN to convert their existing FOCUS programs
to WebFOCUS. After the conversion is completed later this year, they will be
looking at taking advantage of new WebFOCUS capabilities in the future.

|