Software & Hardware Standards

The following standards have been established to promote a number of teaching options for faculty; provide a number of educational opportunities for students; and address most of the software and hardware compatibility issues among the twelve participating colleges and the project's Superserver.

These standards have been recommended by the Technology Task Force whose membership consists of technical support staff from four of the participating colleges. These standards are not intended as directives to dictate course content or force the use of particular software, but merely to serve as recommended guidelines to promote collaboration, compatibility, and success of the WNC HB-275 E-commerce Project. A college has the right to vary their form of instruction from these standards, however; colleges purchasing software, not recommended by these standards, must understand that compatibility cannot be assured. The individual college using such software must also assume responsibility for any technical support required in the conversion of files or in the modification of programs to facilitate the posting or sharing of such files on the Superserver.

Individual College Standards

Each college is to purchase one Dell PowerEdge (or equivalent server such as Gateway 7400 or Compaq 370T01) "Lab Workgroup" server and three Pentium based workstations. Since Microsoft develops widely used web application software, the Task Force recommends the use of Windows 2000 Server as the operating system standard for the server. Most colleges have technical support staff with some working knowledge of Microsoft products. Additionally, Windows 2000 Internet Information Server 5 (IIS5) is recommended as the web server software for the "Lab Workgroup" server. IIS5 fully supports Microsoft's Visual Basic based Active Server Pages (ASP), which can be used as an introduction to web scripting languages. The use of JAVA and CGI as a scripting language instead of ASP is highly recommended for compatibility on those pages to be posted on the Superserver.

To support instruction on a platform other than Microsoft, the Technology Task Force recommends, as an option, one or more of the three student workstations be used to load Redhat Linux .

The Redhat Linux server may also be helpful for teaching PERL, JAVA, PHP and CGI scripting languages with a UNIX based web server. Some of the colleges have already expressed an interest to teach their students database applications. The Redhat Linux platform may be used as a database server for applications such as the popular MySQL database . MySQL may also operate on the Windows 2000 server. However, the compatibility of MySQL and Windows 2000 has not yet been tested for use on this project. Since Windows 2000 Server and Redhat Linux will be used as the standard server operating systems at each college, the E-commerce Grant will provide the following OS software packages for each college.

1. Microsoft Windows 2000 Server - (5 user license)
   Includes the following software:
   Microsoft Internet Information Server 5 (IIS5)
   Windows Terminal Services for remote administration
   Microsoft Active Scripting Pages (ASP) scripting support
   
   
2. Abria Standard Software Suite - (unlimited users):
   Includes the following software:
   Abria SQL Standard for Linux V2.1
   Abria SQL Standard for Windows V2.1
   Redhat Linux 6.2
   Abria MySQL Administration Training CD-ROM for both Linux and Windows
   Abria Application Pack for Linux
   

A number of various web development software and scripting software packages are available for purchase. Instructors may prefer to begin their courses with HTML coding and not use a software template. In order for each college to have flexibility in determining their teaching preferences and uses of web application software, the following software is considered to meet the acceptable standard and can be purchased with funds allocated through the E-commerce Grant. A total sum of $9,000 (adjusted to cover equipment cost overages at the colleges) has been allocated to each individual college for the purchase of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Abria Standard Software Suite and any of the following adopted application software.

NOTE: Application designs can change when files are created under one software format and transferred to be used under another format. The student or instructor must assume the responsibility for resolving software incompatibility issues when sharing or transferring files to a different file format.

Suggested application software:

GoLive
ColdFusion
DreamWeaver
Homesite
Microsoft FrontPage (the use of FrontPage extensions IS NOT recommended)

Suggested scripting methods for compatibility with the Superserver:

Microsoft ASP (recommended for use in the student lab environment only)
VBSCRIPT
JAVA
JAVASCRIPT
CGI
PERL

Superserver Standards

The Superserver located at Southwestern Community College will be equipped with the following hardware and software. These standards were selected for maximum performance, software compatibility, and functionality.

Server Hardware

Sun Enterprise 420R Server
Dual 450 Mhz RISC processors
2 GB RAM

Server Operating System

Sun Solaris version 8

Web Services

I-Planet Enterprise Webserver (still being tested)

Application Services

Chili-Soft for Microsoft ASP script emulation (still being tested)

A technical support website will be available on the Superserver. The site will include FAQs, support documentation, How-To, Tech Support forums, etc.

The above standards will also be published on the Superserver website. Additionally, colleges that extend themselves beyond the recommended standards may also wish to publish their testing results, pitfalls, and configuration documentation on the site.