back to article System at the heart of scaled-back £30m Sheffield University project runs on end-of-life Oracle database

Sheffield University's mission to create a new £30.4m student information management system – which saw its original design dropped last week after years of delay – stumbled on integrating corporate software running on an effectively out-of-support Oracle database. According to information passed to The Register, the …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    idiots

    University run by Fuckwits for choosing anything oracle related in the first place!.

    1. Chris G

      Re: idiots

      Considering they run nine different computer systems or engineering courses for undergrads, perhaps they should get some inhouse help.

      1. The Basis of everything is...
        Holmes

        Re: idiots

        A very long time ago I looked at being a student there, but they made it clear it wasn't worth my time even bothering to apply.

        Many years later I ended up doing some consulting work and teaching a whole bunch of their staff on some computer stuff.

        The irony was delicious.

      2. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: idiots

        "Considering they run nine different computer systems or engineering courses for undergrads, perhaps they should get some inhouse help."

        I can just see some enthusiastic young go-getters designing a system that's unsupportable in a few years but integrates nicely into social media, corporate intelligence systems, etc.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: idiots

      There will be a whole mess of legacy systems issues here that probably go back to the late 80s/early 1990s and something called the MAC project which was a Oracle Forms/Reports/DB ERP built by universities for universities. Because it was so individual and customisable it is very hard for some unis to get off of it and replace with a packaged solution because they will need to change most of their business processes. Some would argue rightly that they should have updated their business processes years ago, however in the tightly regulated environment of Higher Education that is easier said that done.

      1. DomDF

        Re: idiots

        Getting universities to spend money on things that aren't unnecessary new buildings or half a million pounds salary for the VC is easier said than done.

        1. BitGin

          Re: idiots

          In fairness to the universities... many of those unnecessary shiny new buildings are paid for by specific funding (donations or grants that can only be used for that shiny new building).

          Most universities would like to spend money on things like keeping the rain out of their existing buildings or upgrading ancient software but everybody donating money to these places wants their name on a plaque on the front of a swanky new building where everyone can see it and not in a filing cabinet on a receipt for an upgrade license from Oracle (possibly behind a door marked "beware of the leopard").

          Maybe they could try moving their datacentre into each new building they put up so they can claim all those IT upgrades are part of the budget for the new building rather than maintenance?

  2. Warm Braw

    Dates back to 2014...

    Well, they'll have missed two complete student lifecycles in the intervening period. Universities are definitely up there with government when it comes to "visionary" projects that crumble into dust.

  3. Ian Johnston Silver badge

    What is so fascinating about a minor glitch in introducing new management software in the UK's #27 (current Guardian ratings) university? Did someone from El Reg go there?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So we're not the only ones still using 11.2.0.4.0 then! Although we should be making the jump tov19 in January.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Same here, although I suspect we probably won't go live till March/April at the earliest.

      Our main issue isn't particularly the Oracle version itself, but the fact that the customer now want's DR adding to the DB (which we've always pushed for), but they've never been willing to pay for it before now.

    2. chasil

      upgrade gymastics

      I'll say that 32-bit 11.2.0.4 is part of an upgrade that I have been asked to plan.

      Moving from that to 19.3 or higher is a problem - DBUA does not (appear to) handle 32-bit databases, and it must be done with the dbupgrade command-line tool.

      I am wondering what my options are for the catdwgrd.sql script to revert, and I've been advised not even to offer it as an option. Dropping back down from 64 to 32-bit would be asking for a disaster.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Other RDBMS are available

    What would be wrong with:

    1. Use a reliable open source database such as PostgreSQL.

    2. Chip them a fairly generous donation every so often (but less than the Oracle leechensing, sorry, licensing, costs).

    3. …

    4. Profit!

    1. BenDwire Silver badge

      Re: Other RDBMS are available

      +1 for PosgreSQL

      I cannot imagine why they would need anything more powerful, nor why they've wasted so much money on this already. And these people are educating students?

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Other RDBMS are available

        "And these people are educating students?"

        No, they are business managers. The people educating the students would make an even bigger hash of it because every single one of them would refuse to change how they work and insist on not only their own long-standing and familiar processes be accommodated, but also every little whim and edge case they can think of :-)

    2. Management Order

      Re: Other RDBMS are available

      Its a support problem. The ERP is probably only validated with Oracle or (maybe) SQLServer. Consequently if you don't use the supported DB you don't have application support.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Other RDBMS are available

        Bingo oracle and sql server are the only supported dbs and God don't remind me of the f#@*king triggers in that hideous schema (its like a worse version of WordPress metadata for user defined fields)

      2. Robert Grant

        Re: Other RDBMS are available

        EDB will sell you enterprise support, and even massive levels of Oracle compatibility for Postgres. Take a look!

    3. chasil

      Re: Other RDBMS are available

      You are essentially describing EnterpriseDB.

  6. b0llchit Silver badge
    Devil

    The light view

    Student Lifecycle Programme

    So, that is a view to display "SELECT * FROM students WHERE alive" or something like that?

    And only an old Oracle DB can deliver such beauty. Of course.

    Better select max(sarcasm) from newsthoughts where user = 'me'.

  7. Ian 55

    "Oracle's response would be 'you must upgrade' – which is an incredibly expensive"

    Say it ain't so...

    1. ShadowSystems

      At Ian 55, re: expensive upgrade...

      Which is more expensive, the cost of upgrading software evidently critical to your business, or the cost of the potential class action lawsuit leveled against said business for having not done due dilligence to ensure that client records/PII was kept as secure as possible?

      I can't imagine telling a jury that your software was years past even it's max "extended support" lifespan, that it may have been as secure as you could get it but that it was only as secure as it had been years before, and how "we take security & your privacy seriously" would hold even a single molecule of water given you didn't consider it serious enough to pay to keep it current. =-/

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: At Ian 55, re: expensive upgrade...

        The age of the database and its support status really ought to have little to no bearing on something like that. You build that kind of security around your crown jewels. Just look at what is still running in the bowels of most banks!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: At Ian 55, re: expensive upgrade...

          I've worked for a number of financial institutions over the years. I certainly wouldn't say they were "living" on old technology. Rather, they didn't chase the latest buzzwords and alphabet soup acronyms in the industry just for the sake of being "on the edge."

          Nothing got replaced unless it needed replacing, and those were NOT decisions to be made on a technology basis alone.

          The same goes for every other industry I worked in.

          For the most part, most businesses and industries pay lip service to "the leading edge", but live on the *trailing* edge where things are stable and reliable and most importantly of all: KNOWN. Sure the ERP crashes every morning at 2AM and tech support gets messaged to reboot it at a cost of $x, but that beats the unknown millions it would cost to *replace* the ERP system or upgrade it.

          1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

            Re: At Ian 55, re: expensive upgrade...

            Yes, that's the point I was making.

      2. Lazlo Woodbine

        Re: @ShadowSystems

        Luckily Sheffield University isn't in the United States, so that really isn't going to happen.

  8. heyrick Silver badge

    which is an incredibly expensive, risky and time-consuming activity with near-zero additional benefits

    Hasn't anybody heard of backwards compatibility?

    An upgrade, unless technically fundamentally different (different processor, switched to 64 bit, or whatever) should provide all the shiny new functionality as expected, but older software should continue to work with it as it did previously.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's not the point. They'd have to shell out the big bucks for the new version, and it takes time to update these things, though it shouldn't be more than a week.

      When we updated, my DBA had Oracle shit itself so hard in the test db, she had to restore from backups and try again. Then it shit itself in a totally different way on production, despite test being a recent copy of production.

      And since they're not updating the software to take advantage of any new benefits, it doesn't gain them much.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Production data in a test environment? Just as well you’re anon…

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      That's not how tribal opperate

      Nor how sits is architected

  9. ComputerSays_noAbsolutelyNo Silver badge
    Coat

    Your IT project is bad,

    if the components you build upon,

    are already past their expiry date,

    prior to release.

    The coat, you ask?

    That is my cooking coat,

    which I use to prepare dinner using last years vegetables,

    two year old meat and ancient grain.

    Today's menu: the BC/AD steak pie, early Roman-Empire style

    1. b0llchit Silver badge
      Coat

      But your coat, is that an old coat too? If your coat is past its expiry day, which it is when you have used it before, then you will have a mess in the kitchen and your clothes will also be ruined. Must keep those coat-licenses running! A new licensed coat for each occasion.

      My coat is new, every time. Putting a new pirated one on now...

      1. BenDwire Silver badge
        Linux

        WTF is cooking coat? I don't need a cooking coat to 'Open Sauce'

        1. b0llchit Silver badge
          Pirate

          Did you pay a license for that Sauce, Open to your Red Sailing DB overlord? You know you have to prove your Open in the Sauce or you are a pirate. And a pirate only gets fishy meals in the Red Wet Prison.

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge
    FAIL

    Great idea from project management

    "The investment in the programme has already delivered new systems that previously did not exist at the University"

    So let me get this straight : you're in the middle of a rather difficult and complex upgrade on some major components of your system, and you go and add a bunch of new components along the way.

    That is undoubtedly a wonderful way to keep the system stable and have reliable comparison points for the upgrade to proceed correctly.

    I don't know who is in charge of this "world class" project, but I wouldn' trust them with upgrading my standalone PC.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great idea from project management

      But they are 'agile'...

      "we need to take an agile approach and adapt to the things we learn as the programme develops"

      If they weren't so agile it could have been a d/b that went EOL more than 6 years ago.

      There is probably a req for a more up to date version sitting at the bottom of an in-tray on some bean-counter's desk because someone forgot to order a biro for them to sign it

    2. The Basis of everything is...

      Re: Great idea from project management

      If you're running an overall upgrade programme (funny how it's never billed as a downgrade) then there is nothing wrong with having projects within that to something new. Maybe it's easier to add new, migrate date and then drop old. The key thing is how well your overall programme and project management works.

      And the answer to that point is...

  11. WhereAmI?

    I absolutely loath Oracle. I first wanted to punch it in the face with version 8g trying to connect it to CATIA in the local shipyard. Once I left there I thought I escaped its slimy tentacles but no; my current job requires some form of support for the 11 and 12 series. Fortunately, not much - just setting up the connection between our product and the database. I still recall the update from 11.3.0.1 to 11.3.0.2 (I think) which, you would believe, was a minor change that wouldn't cause trouble.

    Wrong.

    So very, very wrong.

    It actually turned out to be a major upgrade which really screwed things over for us.

    If I get really lucky and the customer asks 'which database should I use' my response is always 'any of the supported ones *except* Oracle'. I got really lucky once - just once - and turned a very large Federal department away from that pile of ..... I saved them $m but of course, they'll never know that.

    1. chasil

      You actually mean 8i, the final release of which was 8.1.7.4.

      The "grid" part didn't come until Oracle licensed the VMS clustering code, and bundled it into 10g as RAQ.

      1. david 136

        RAC, not RAQ predated inclusion of Oracle Clustering.

        Oracle licensed some Tru64 clustering, not VMS clustering. Oracle didn't use the kernel clustering part.

  12. ethump

    Can someone give me a clue what a "Student Lifecycle Programme" system does?

    for THIRTY MILLION quid? Is this a Tory scheme?

    I might have a go at writing one for half that!

    1. katrinab Silver badge
      Meh

      I’m guessing it handles applications, matriculation, graduation / drop-out

      1. GuildenNL

        And, ahem.. when students end their lifecycle by dying.

    2. Lazlo Woodbine

      At a guess it's a system that handles all interaction with students, so it'll need to plug into UCAS for a start.

      It will need to interface with all the academic departments, it will need to interface with all DfE systems, it'll need to interface with the company running the cafeterias, and the Halls of Residence, probably all the student housing companies as well.

      Then it will need to work with the various careers agency systems as well

      Probably half the cost will be consultants who specialise in all those areas

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Former SITS admin here...

    Bet the dB is down to sits as well, tribal were keen to punt it circa 2010.

    SITS is an appalling mess which could only support unicode with a very pricey update (which is why so many unis are unable to print letters with accented names) . It's main use is for student record management and enrollment data so usually first step of any student life cycle at uni. SITS it self is the most unusable mess I have ever used, highlights include

    - being told to make the HTML conform to the uni accessibility guidelines and discovering that the & is a control char in there intrepter so you couldn't use HTML entities

    - Ctrl+z in the client app closed without saving the application

    - they reinvented sql but with none standard characters for operators in expressions and you couldn't copy and paste into query box

    Those are the ones that spring to mind I don't want to think too hard and remember the true horror

    For the uninitiated student life cycle projects basically aim to unify the data held by disparate systems into a common format to allow say an undergrads records to be accessible to the masters systems. Simple enough until you tangle with the vendors and warring departments who all want to keep their existing systems; then it becomes a writhing nest of consultants and project manglement hell

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    > "It has become clear that it will not be possible to integrate the student record management system SITS with our current Corporate Information System (CIS) as initially planned,

    If you integrate CIS with SITS in a new IT system you're quite likely to get CISTITIS so no wonder it has been a painful experience.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Even at the vendors conference they kept reffering to SITS as SHITS...

      1. thondwe

        IIRC the data in SITS does even confirm to basic database design principles - e.g. not even in 3rd normal form - duplicated data all over...

  15. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    I hope this includes replacing their online job application system which actively fights against any attempt to actually complete any application.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Given the other comments about their systems and environment so far, I'd wager that they consider a problematic job application system to be merely a test of your patience with recalcitrant and flaky systems like you'll be dealing with on a daily basis going forward if you get the job.

      So if you don't have the patience to apply with a flaky system, you certainly don't have the patience to WORK with flaky systems every day for the next few decades. :)

    2. chuBb.

      It's probably powered by SITS too, the sales consultants were very keen to sell as a wonder system that can do all (badly)

  16. JamesTGrant
    Holmes

    £30million though??

    Let’s say I’m terrible at negotiating and I pay all my team £100k per year let’s say I have a team of 10 people, it’s not 30years work to do this?

    Suuurrreeellyyy you’d be better off in-housing this and write off years one and two whilst you built a team and got some solid requirement capture done. Then smash it out in a few years as agile as you like. I’ll do it in 6 years for £25million - hit me up!!

  17. G R Goslin

    Ah, the happy days of megaspend are not over

    Ah, for the Victorian days. The Victorians, in the main were a very pragmatic breed. Their spend was on the basis of how much the money spent earned. There's an old saying, that goes "As a shipwright, if I hire a hundred shipbuilders, I can build more ships, which I shall sell for profit. If I hire a hundred accountants, not one extra plank will be laid". Where is the profit in a database of students. I used to be a Design Draughtsman. My eqipment spend was on an advanced, for it's day, draughting machine. As an apprentice, my draughting machiene was bought in the ninteen thrties, and worked perfectly, without a penny being spent on it in the meantime. I ended up with CAD. Easy to work, and more comfortable than standing on my feet all day, buut the number of designs that left my board did not markedly increase, despite the spend being millions, and the annual maintenance in the thousands, department wide.If my old companies had not been bought up, asset stripped and closed down, my drawings would still fill plan chests. As CAD, my designs, were on software not compatible with later systems and so, no longer exist, and while they did exist cost money to maintain, on a continuous basis.

  18. martinusher Silver badge

    Kind of expensive....

    By my reckoning this system works out at about 1000 pounds a student plus extras for hardware, running the system, software maintenance and so on.

    Does it return anything like that amount of value per head per student compared to what was being used before? What does it do, anyway? Can it be replaced by something cheaper, punched cards, for example?

    Does anyone ask these questions or are they too bound up in a marketing haze of bonhomie to bother asking them?

  19. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    Ahh Oracle. Nice to see the influence of Sun hasn't gone away (although Oracle was always a little like this anyway). I remember back in the dark ages buying an internal CD rom for one of our Sun workstations. The price? Bear in mind that hardware wise, it was a fairly generic SCSI 2 speed CD Rom. £600 including fitting. Had we not been beholden to Sun's warranty, I could have spend £200 or so on a PC SCSI CD Rom, although I am unsure if the Sun one had a specific firmware.

  20. MachDiamond Silver badge

    Mission creep

    I bet if they built a system that ONLY did what NEEDED doing, they could get by with many alternative. The security aspect and getting sued is a problem due to overreach and collecting too much data on the students. Let's say all they collected was the basics of classes registered for, grades and degrees awarded, fees paid, etc. A copy of that found on the Dark Web would be of little interest. When it also contains health data, financial information on the student and their parents, discipline and other surveillance, that's where it gets complicated. Wrapping everything up in one big package can be a problem too. Housing can be on its own since once the student leaves and there are no charges pending, the files can be deleted. Any health data that's collected if the student uses collage services can and should be kept separate. The student should be given the option of collecting those records if they like or having them just wind up being archived for the mandated period of time before deletion once they leave the school. It's a pain in the bum, but when I went to uni, I had to "clear" several departments before my degrees were delivered. Clearing was going to a few different departments and getting a "no fees due" stamp, checkoff or printout to submit to the main campus/department office. It's been so long I can't remember the details.

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