Summary

The Waffil2 phase of the AcIS ID System deployment replaces the current waffil application with a version that takes advantage of many system enhancements that have occurred over the past year.

Motivation

Waffil is a current AcIS ID System application which allows providers of person data to enter this information into a web form. Based on the entered data, the current waffil generates a file of records in fixed-width affiliated feed format. (Waffil is a significant improvement on the previous approach to collecting person data, which required adminstrators to write these files by hand.)

The addition of person data to a waffil results in assignment of a UNI and the ability of the person to set up a password and, in many cases, an email account. It also drives the person's entry in the whitepages directory, as well as the authorization privileges that AcIS publishes for that person.

An overview of the current waffil system

Waffil2 improves on current waffil by skipping the file step and writing the person data directly to the ID System database.

Specific improvements include:

• Real-time creation of UNIs (current waffil imposes a turnaround time that is frequently two days and sometimes as much as a week)
• Ability of a newly created person to immediately set up a password and activate an email account (if eligible).
• Enables the administrator entering the data to resolve possible person match problems; also enables the administrator to enter a UNI, if known, to simplify matching process.
• Roughly 30% of nightly batch processing time is devoted to processing waffils; by greatly simplifying the process, and by performing processing in real-time in the new ID System database, overall nightly batch times are reduced significantly.
• Lays the foundation for migration of non-waffil person data to new ID System database.

Details

The following are the components of the Waffil2:

Name	Description
Waffil2 User Web Application	A web application that allows administrators to enter person data. This application must be available to all current waffil users. This application accepts the union of all fields in all feeds, including UNI, ssn and date of birth and pin, school, graduation year, and all others. It assigns UNIs, attempts person matching, and walks the user through the process of resolving potential matching problems. It also allows the user to modify and remove existing person data previously entered through waffil2. Further, the application assigns appropriate unix account eligibility to any person who is added to the system.
Person Data Backfeed	This program moves person data from the new ID System database to the old ID system database, to maintain compatibility with legacy applications. As data is moved, the program must infer data, especially affiliation data, and populate the old ID System database accordingly.