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.