The Information Technology Infrastructure Project (ITIP) is a strategic project to leverage Weber State’s technology assets for greater operational effectiveness in teaching, learning, research and administration.  It will transform WSU’s varying technologies and functions into a single, unified education experience.  Students, faculty, staff, alumni, friends and others will have collaboration tools, streamlined delivery of services, ability to do business more efficiently, self-serve access to personalized, timely and accurate information, increased productivity and decreased costs of providing information.  

The future infrastructure is comprised of many highly integrated components.  Several of the foundation pieces have already been put into place, including:

• Oracle database management system
• WSU data warehouse
• Sun Microsystems hardware 
• Crystal Reports Enterprise Reporting tool. 

Each of the systems within the Lynx family will be able to take advantage of automated and simplified workflow tools as well as direct connection to the existing campus imaging system, Legato/OTG.  The ITIP teams have participated in Business Process Analysis (BPA) training and are reviewing current business processes looking for ways to streamline and improve business practices.   

This package of software has been named Lynx (a.k.a. Banner) and will provide increased accessibility to the information, enhanced data security and compatibility across functional areas of responsibility.

Lynx is modular, meaning that there are modules for different functional areas, including Financial Aid, Finance, Human Resources/Payroll, Alumni/Development, and Student.  There is also a General module that ties all of the functional modules together. 

Lynx is a collection of forms (screens) with imbedded instructions used to enter data, modify data, delete data, and query data.  Lynx simply provides the screens and programs necessary to manipulate data.  The data itself is stored in tables residing in an Oracle database.  It is a relational database, meaning that tables are linked together by means of some internal identification number and therefore data redundancy is limited.  For example, one table might have a student ID number and the course number in which he/she is enrolled.  A separate table has the course numbers and the course descriptions.  The course numbers would link the two tables together, providing a course description for the courses in which a student is enrolled.  There are over 2,000 tables in the Lynx system.