OPTICS from Educare is a solution designed for UEIMS, Ras Al Khaimah to automate the administrative activities of the institution and thus enable efficient exchange of information between students, teachers and parents. This section describes the implementation architecture of the OPTICS software product in the educational institutional environment.

Product Technology and Architecture

The OPTICS product is constructed using the Model View Controller (MVC) Architecture that consists of model view and control layers. This architecture is scalable and provides for easy maintenance.

ASP .Net and VB .Net are used as the front end and code behind. OPTICS integrates with SMS gateways, Electronic Payment gateways and Personal Digital Assistants that provides for mobile computing.

The PDA application is built using Microsoft C# and supports Microsoft Pocket PC version 4.2 and above.

OPTICS Data Server

All information related to the student’s curricular and extra curricular grading, administrative information like fees, attendance records, exam schedule, marks secured, timetable (details of Class & home assignments), information on functions, circulars etc. are available on this server.

Teachers and the management can access the institution’s server using the existing Local Area Network (LAN) at the educational institution with Wi-Fi access points.

PDA: Hand held computer or personal digital assistant (PDA) will be used by the teachers to enter data and view information from OPTICS. The PDAs are connected to the OPTICS Data Server over Wi-Fi network. Multiple access points to enable wireless connectivity is provided at the educational institute.

OPTICS Portal Server

The parents/Students securely access information on their child from the OPTICS Data Server after authentication by this server. The parents/students access the portal server over the Internet.

Integration

The institution’s legacy software for student fee details and employee master which reside on the legacy servers are integrated with OPTICS. Thus the OPTICS information portal is powered by the information content obtained from multiple sources.