The University student registration system: A case study in building a high-availability distributed application using general purpose components

Prior to 1994, student registration at Newcastle University involved studen ts being registered in a single place, where they would present a form whic h had previously been filled in by the student and their department. After registration this information was then transferred to a computerised format . The University decided that the entire registration process was to be com puterised for the Autumn of 1994, with the admission and registration being carried out at the departments of the students. Such a system has a very h igh availability requirement: admissions tutors and secretaries must be abl e to access and create student records (particularly at the start of a new academic year when new students arrive). The Ajuna distributed system has b een under development in the Department of Computing Science for many years . Arjuna's design aims are to provide tools to assist in the construction o f fault-tolerant, highly available distributed applications using atomic ac tions (atomic transactions) and replication. Arjuna offers the right set of facilities for this application, and its deployment would enable the Unive rsity to exploit the existing campus network and workstation clusters, ther eby obviating the need for any specialised fault tolerant hardware.