Assignment Part Two: Architectural Description
CASE BACKGROUND
Associate Dean Operations of the Faculty of Arts of Red University wants to automate the way by which an internal grants program of the faculty is handled. She has hired you, a freelance Architecture consultant, to devise an architecture for such a system. Other consultants have done the requirements analysis work before you. It has also been decided that the system shall be a custom Java EE system developed and maintained by an external contractor (the Developer/Maintainer below).
Please study the case details below and then prepare an AD for the system as described in the end of the document.
PROCESS
The SRG Grant. The Faculty of Arts of Red University runs an internal research grant program for its faculty members called Small Research Grant (SRG). Every full time faculty member is eligible to apply for this grant every second year requesting up to $5,000 to support their research.
Application Process. To apply, a faculty member needs to put together a research proposal and a CV and submit them for consideration by the program deadline (Nov. 1st of every year). After that, the Director or Chair of the department where the faculty member belongs reads the submitted application package and approves (or, very rarely) rejects it. Once this is done the application is ready to be evaluated by the adjudication committee as described below.
Adjudication Committee - Composition. The submitted SRG applications are reviewed by a committee consisting of faculty members, called the Adjudication Committee (AC). Membership of the AC is a result of an election process: every two years the Dean's Office (DO) of the Faculty of Arts sends a call for nominations. Interested faculty members submit their interest and an election follows, where the voters are all eligible faculty members. The seven (7) candidates with the most votes become the members of the AC for 3 years, until the next election.
Adjudication Committee - Proceedings. The AC meets once a year in January to discuss all the SRGs and award the grant to the best applicants. They work as follows. By early December all submitted and approved applications are distributed to all AC members. AC members read the applications and provide an early evaluation for each. Then they go to the meeting. In the meeting they go through each application, discuss it together, and decide as to whether it should be granted the award and for how much money. The list of successful and unsuccessful candidates is then forwarded to the Dean for final approval.
Provision of the Grant. Once the list is approved by the Dean, notifications are sent to the candidates and the Accounting department also receives a request for transferring funds from the SRG Account (which is credited) to each faculty member's Research Expense account (which is debited).
REQUIREMENTS -
Faculty Member:
- Register in the system using name, employee number and other personal identification.
- The system automatically recognizes whether applicant is a faculty member (through querying the HR system). For extra security, after the authentication process is done, an email is sent to the faculty member's email address registered in the HR system.
- The applicant submits the application for consideration.
- The system identifies the Chair/Director for the faculty member through querying the HR system. The system sends an email notification to the Chair/Director to register/log-in and approve the grant.
- After the decision has been made the applicant receives notification of the result. If successful the monies granted are transferred to his/her Research Expense account.
Chair/ Director:
- Receives an email notification to approve a grant application.
- Registers/Logs-in as in the case of Faculty Member (query HR etc.).
- Accesses the list of SRG applications requiring his/her approval.
- Approves/rejects each application accordingly.
AC Member:
- Receives an email notification to open and review SRG applications. The system knows whom to notify by querying Red University's Voting system and retrieving the AC members that have won the vote to participate in the AC that year.
- To register the faculty member provides to the system his/her employer ID number along with other identifying information. The system queries the HR system to check if the person is a legitimate employee of Red University. The system once again verifies with the Voting System that the faculty member is a legitimate member of the AC.
- The AC Member accesses the applications (PDF documents) and submits his/her reviews and grades.
AC Secretary:
- The AC secretary is a staff member (not a faculty member) that co-ordinates the activities of the AC and supports the AC meeting.
- A system administrator creates an account for the secretary.
- During the AC meeting the secretary enters the system and retrieves the list of SRG applications. S/he then shows each application to the AC using a project screen for discussion.
- In the end of the meeting she submits the adjudication results (who gets how much).
Dean:
- A system administrator creates an account for the Dean.
- The Dean enters the system and retrieves results list and approves it.
Accounting:
- The appropriate journal (accounting) entries take place in the accounting system, without the involvement of accounting personnel.
Project Requirements (what you should do)
Describe the Architecture of a Java EE application that describes the above system. Include the following sections (see also marking scheme for requirements):
1. Executive Summary. 1/2 page max.
2. Context View. 1 page max including diagram.
3. Component View. 3 page max including diagrams. Describe architectural style(s) you are following. Include a component diagram (including external components e.g. HR etc.) and as many sequence diagrams as necessary. The view must describe how Java EE technologies are going to be used.
4. Deployment View (include external systems). 1 page max including deployment diagram. If you are purchasing servers, search the web for models and configurations.
5. Performance, Reliability and Evolution Scenarios. 2 of each. Relate your scenarios with particular quality goals of stakeholders.
Attachment:- Assignment File.rar