1 / 24

IT system for elections within the Church of Sweden

IT system for elections within the Church of Sweden. Rolf Wasteson Sema InfoData AB Sweden rolf.wasteson@infodata.sema.se. Sema. French-Brittish company undergoing a friendly takeover from Schlumberger 21000 employees in more than 25 countries

juancarlos
Download Presentation

IT system for elections within the Church of Sweden

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. IT system for elections within the Church of Sweden Rolf WastesonSema InfoData ABSweden rolf.wasteson@infodata.sema.se

  2. Sema • French-Brittish company undergoing a friendly takeover from Schlumberger • 21000 employees in more than 25 countries • Business:› Consulting› Systems integration› Outsourcing› Software products

  3. InfoData • Part of Sema e-Business Unit WebTec • The leading Swedish supplier of online business information • Supplier of direct marketing services (addresses, register updating and matching, printing…) • Building portals – specialized in the content • Large experience in web, wap, voice and cti • Running Call center

  4. Sema - Church of Sweden • Sema InfoData main supplier of IT services to the Church of Sweden • Major business relations since 1980’th

  5. The history of the Church of Sweden • Protestantic since the age of king Gustav Wasa in 16th Century • The Church has been part of the state since then • Divorce 1 January 2000 • Now a faith community among others

  6. Elections to decision making bodies 16 September 2001 • Previously run by the National Tax Board • The Church supported by Sema InfoData now organizes the elections • The largest election ever done in Sweden(except for the number of persons voting…)

  7. Support system tasks • Register the election organization:› parlamentary bodies (3 500)› constituencies (3 000)› electoral areas (3 500)› voting-stations (4 500) • Register the parties (1200) • Register the lists of candidates (8 000) • Register all candidates (80 000)

  8. Support system tasks (contd.) • Prepare printing orginals for all voting-papers (8 000 editions, 200 000 000 copies) • Prepare printing files for voting cards (6 100 000) • Prepare printing files for electoral registers to all voting-stations (3 500) • Counting of votes • Assign the seats

  9. The organization of the Church of Sweden • Complicated organizational structure • Dynamic organization - >600 changes 2002 • The elections are to the organzation valid from 2002 • Elections to four levels:› Parishes› Communities› Dioceses› Church Assembly

  10. Compressed time scale • 10* bigger than general elections on half the time • A chalenge for the organization of the Church

  11. System structure • The system consist of› The distributed membership register with a centralized update system› A register of the organization and the elected representatives› A register of the electional organization, parties and candidates› A system to handle the results and to assign the seats All subsystems consists of both online routines and batch routines. All online routines are using Web technique

  12. Online routines • All online routiones are built with Informix WebConnect • WebConnect was choosen as the foundation for Web applications in 1997 • WebConnect has a lousy programming language • The developement environment, Data Director for Web, is a buggy tool

  13. The internals of WebConnect Web browserInternet Explorer 5.0 Web-serverNetscape Enterprise HTML pages http://benhur/wbdaemon?MI_NAME=fetch&p=123 Run wbdaemon DataTable: tab Web-connect Interpret template Include datafrom table tabfrom row=123 Fetch templatefetch.html value row … … 123 Priest … … ”HTML”- templatefetch.html … … Informix database fetch.html:<html><body><?misql sql=”select value from tab where row=$p”> <h1>The value is $1</h1> <?/misql> </body></html>

  14. WebConnect applications • The WebConnect code contains SQL that is interpreted every time it is executed • Performance (and code readabillity) will be enhanced by using stored procedures • Original application did not make use of it

  15. Batch routines • Written in different techniques: • Stored procedures • SQL scripts to be run in dbaccess • Shell scripts with extensive use of awk programming, Unix sort, join and merge • Very few routines written in traditional programming languages (C and 4GL) Our home-brewed RAD concept

  16. Access control system • A very flexible and powerfull access control system was implemented when develping the election system • Concepts of rules and organizational hierarchies are used • Implemented by using userdefined tags in WebConnect app-pages • Re-use of original user authorization structure dramativcally shortened the development time • Performance implications because of need of dynamic authorization check in every program call

  17. Software • Sun Solaris 2.6 • Informix IDS 7.31 • Informix WebConnect • Informix 4GL • Sun Workshop C & GNU C The software will be upgraded in late autumn 2001 to • Sun Solaris 8 • Informix Internet Foundation 2000 • Informix 4GL (new version)

  18. Hardware • Sun Microsystems Enterprise 4500 • 4 400 MHz Sparc II CPUs • 3 Gb RAM • 372 Gb T3 disk units with optical connections, RAID 5 All harware is built with redundancy for minimum system failures

  19. Performance enhancements • Severe performance problems in the beginning. Solved by: • A more powerfull machine • Utilizing stored procedures in WebConnect applications • Unloading large tables, manipulate files by Unix sort, join and awk instead of Informix SQL • Optimizing WebServer behavior • Rewrite SQL to better utilize indexes • Gain performance by new indexes • Using the TYPE(raw) property on tables in IDS 7.31

  20. Project organisation • Project manager • 4 co-project managers • 10 programmers • 2 full time persons working with versions management and testing • 2 database technicians • 2 system managers • 2 production assistants • A total of 25 persons involved in the project, many on full time • Almost 15 man years spent on development

  21. Application tests • Extensive testing • End users involved in tests during developement phase • Full scale acceptance tests • A total of more than 25 different application databases – version logistics extremly complicated

  22. Problems • The complicated organizational structure of the Church • ”The moving target”, the constantly changing organization • Performance • Testing vastly more time consuming than calculated • The tight time scale • The changing demands from the Church

  23. Experiences • WebConnect not really suited for such a large application • Today we would probably have choosen other tools, utilizing Java techniques • WebConnect good for non programmers • Too much time spent on administative matters with Informix, both contractual and support • Very little knowledge of WebConnect in Informix organization • Web browsers differs very much from version to version

  24. End Questions?

More Related