3 ms·

I'm a grad student at Tufts, and our online course registration app does this (called "SIS"). You can only register for classes during some time period: 8am to

I'm a grad student at Tufts, and our online course registration app does this (called "SIS"). You can only register for classes during some time period: 8am to 6pm, I think. It's crazy. Tufts recently hired a huge team to "fix" SIS. It's now called iSIS and you can tell it's still using SIS underneath. (The HTML markup returned is the exact same as before, but it's dressed up a little nicer.) Nuts.

Fomite 13y ago
God I hated this when I was at Tufts. But its far from the only university system to do this. I suspect a middleware vendor somewhere.
- burntsushi 13y ago
  Oh, most definitely. I was at Worcester State before Tufts, and part of their registration had to be done via paper (in person at the registrar). It was almost as convenient as these online systems... (Assuming I was on campus anyway.)
Buge 13y ago
University of Michigan's student business site (registering classes, bills, transcripts, etc.) is closed from 4am - 6am every day and 11pm Saturday - 7:30am Sunday. I hit this period several times without knowing what was wrong. The warning isn't very obvious.
stygiansonic 13y ago
When I went to Queen's University, the web app for course registration, viewing your marks and other related tasks was rumoured to be a wrapper around a telnet interface. I never got confirmation, but the following evidence was enough for me: - Fixed number of columns/rows output on a given page and rendered in a fixed-width font so things would align. - The need to navigate through "pages" of information that were far smaller than what a browser could handle, but would make sense in a terminal window. - A form-driven interface with buttons for separate actions; the buttons seemingly would map to certain keypresses in a terminal interface. I'm guessing the original computer-based system provided a telnet interface in the '90s but this was deemed insecure/out of date as the years went by. Not wanting to significantly change the architecture, a web wrapper must have been deemed the best option.

Fomite 13y ago

God I hated this when I was at Tufts. But its far from the only university system to do this. I suspect a middleware vendor somewhere.

burntsushi 13y ago
Oh, most definitely. I was at Worcester State before Tufts, and part of their registration had to be done via paper (in person at the registrar). It was almost as convenient as these online systems... (Assuming I was on campus anyway.)

Buge 13y ago

University of Michigan's student business site (registering classes, bills, transcripts, etc.) is closed from 4am - 6am every day and 11pm Saturday - 7:30am Sunday. I hit this period several times without knowing what was wrong. The warning isn't very obvious.

stygiansonic 13y ago

When I went to Queen's University, the web app for course registration, viewing your marks and other related tasks was rumoured to be a wrapper around a telnet interface. I never got confirmation, but the following evidence was enough for me: - Fixed number of columns/rows output on a given page and rendered in a fixed-width font so things would align. - The need to navigate through "pages" of information that were far smaller than what a browser could handle, but would make sense in a terminal window. - A form-driven interface with buttons for separate actions; the buttons seemingly would map to certain keypresses in a terminal interface. I'm guessing the original computer-based system provided a telnet interface in the '90s but this was deemed insecure/out of date as the years went by. Not wanting to significantly change the architecture, a web wrapper must have been deemed the best option.