Software Futures has been appointed to assist the Medical Research Council (MRC) in the development of a three-tier client/server application to facilitate widespread access to its health research databases at its head office in Cape Town.
Referred to as the National Health Knowledge Network, the project is funded by a three-year grant from the Department of Arts, Culture, Science and Technology Innovation Fund. Component Futures (Cape), a division of Software Futures, will be involved in the development of the core knowledge network infrastructure over a period of 12 months.
MRC group executive Dr Koos Louw explains: "We needed to develop a three-tier client/server Internet application to facilitate access to the MRC`s research databases. This would provide us with an innovative knowledge management solution and additional benefits in terms of security and long-term data management. The MRC lacked the experience to develop such a system internally and we therefore initiated a joint project with Component Futures to develop the system."
The Component Futures development team has been on site since January and has made significant progress in the development of the core infrastructure of the knowledge network. The solution involves the development of a Corba-compliant middle tier of business objects, connecting client-side Java applications and applets to the MRC`s research information contained in object and object-relational database repositories.
Component Futures Cape GM Volker Schaberg says: "The Component Futures team has also designed a knowledge discovery application that allows the end-user to navigate through research information using an intuitive interface. This enables researchers to access the information they require and uncover unknown relationships within the data repositories."
New research information will be incorporated into the system on an ongoing basis and the appropriate security and authorisation systems will also be implemented. This will permit researchers to share information within defined groups of authorised users.
Component Futures is working with MRC developers to ensure that the necessary skills are transferred to ensure the long-term maintainability of the application. This includes mentoring in the object-oriented methodology which is supplemented with focused courses from the FutureSchool programme.
Systems development division manager Dr Chris Seebregts says this aspect is crucial to the long-term viability of the system. He says: "We need to develop the internal capability to maintain the system once it has been developed and also to extend it in the future."
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