Integration of Campus Wide Information systems using a hub and spoke architecture

The Universiteit van Amsterdam (UvA) [12] is geographically displaced throughout the millennium old capital city. As a reflection of this and of the devolved powers of the organization there exists’s a diversity of information systems and solutions scattered physically, architecturally and administratively. To lower cost of maintenance and to approach, in the near future, a more uniform and consistent biosphere of systems a data integration project was initiated. This project involved the transition from a number of diverse structures glued together with scripts with many to many relations to the use of a well known architectural pattern, the ‘hub and spoke’ model via an industrial standard product Oracle Interconnect [10]. The product enabled the possibility of near real time synchronizations. This paper details the ins and outs and highlights potential profits and indeed the potential pit falls.