FLORIDA AUTOMATED SYSTEM FOR TRANSFERRING EDUCATIONAL RECORDS
FLORIDA DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
OFFICE OF APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT AND SUPPORT (OADS)

Effective: December 9, 2012
Revised:

Chapter XIII

Multiple Institution Processing

 

Throughout the state there are several educational consortia that process their student records in a common processing system. This presents a scheduling problem if IBM's FTP V2.2 is used for data communications. The problem arises when the consortium tries to run record transfer jobs for more than one institution at a time. As soon as the first job accesses the institution's VTAM Logical Unit, the other jobs are locked out. These jobs will then abort, unless the institution's data center has some way of preventing the simultaneous execution of two or more jobs. Since this cannot be guaranteed in the context of the multiple jobs the System uses to perform certain functions, some of the System's users will need a multiple institution processing facility.

The System manages security via a NWRDC logon ID. As the System was originally constituted, all processing concerning a given institution must be conducted using that institution's logon ID. The System will continue to maintain this security methodology in the implementation of its multiple institution feature. For the members of an educational consortium this will mean that the individual members will retain their separate logon IDs (for use when separate processing is needed) while a common logon ID will be issued to the consortium itself.

Using this common number, the consortium will be able to batch the transmissions for all its members together in a single job. For example, the record requests for any of the members of a consortium could be batched together for transmission. When the consortium's common number is used to empty its mailbox, the System will empty the mailboxes of all consortium members and transmit them to the consortium's local site as a single file. When either of the aging reports are executed using the common number, the records of all members of the consortium will be checked.

When using the common number, separate processing is not permitted. For example, if the consortium wants to empty the mailbox of a single institution, it cannot use the common number to perform this task. If separate processing is required, the consortium will have to use the member's individual logon ID.

Note there is an important precondition for obtaining a multiple institution logon ID: all institutions for which the consortium is to manage record transfer must be from the same level of education. Thus, a consortium of universities or a consortium of school districts could be granted a multiple logon ID. A consortium of universities and school districts, though, would not be eligible.