Ingres—Case Study
Algonquin College Navigates the Learning
Landscape with Ingres Technology
Ottawa, Ontario-based Algonquin College offers more than 100 courses of study to more than 30,000 full-time and part-time students earning certificates, bachelor degrees, and graduate degrees in applied studies. Academic topics include business, languages, public safety, health, transportation, hospitality, media, and advanced technology, among other subjects.

As a prominent college located in Canada's capital, Algonquin strives to deliver client centered services that ensure success for its students. As such, Algonquin's mission statement includes "incorporating technology to improve delivery of service to help us exceed our clients' expectations."

In addition to technology being part of its curriculum, advanced technology drives services for students, faculty, and employees, giving them wireless and web-based access to curriculum, self-service, and student information. When developing its technology-based services in 1993, Algonquin knew it needed to invest in a high-performance, transaction-oriented database that would scale. Algonquin looked to Ingres. Today, the college continues to run mission-critical student and faculty applications on Ingres open source technology.

SOLUTION
Utilizing the Ingres Enterprise Database and Ingres OpenROAD, an open source application development platform, Algonquin provides state-of-the-art client services to staff, students, and employees. In adopting an open source solution, Tom Friesen, senior data management analyst, IT services at Algonquin College, says, "The technology's ease of use, stability, and excellent support allows us to continue to work with Ingres without second-guessing."

Algonquin's IT services group takes advantage of Ingres Support Services. Friesen explains, "We have a lot of very complex applications and Ingres has always been there to help. When we have a problem in the middle of the night, Ingres support is there, ready to handle our problems over the phone. They know our system and they have the technicians and the expertise to help us. Our Lifeline Support is a lifesaver."

RESULTS
Algonquin meets the needs of its educational community with a full palette of technology driven services that are based on Ingres technology. For example, its more than 2,500 administrators, staff, and faculty use a human resources information system (HRIS) for one stop access to employee-related information. Likewise, with the self-service module Algonquin College Student Information System (ACSIS), students manage all aspects of campus life - everything from viewing timetables and grades to ordering transcripts, registering for classes, and even keeping track of tuition account balances. Friesen notes, "Most of our continuing education students register online. Without our Ingres-based online services, we would have totally unmanageable lineups during registration periods.

Peter Kerkhof, systems analyst and senior developer at Algonquin, says, "Fifteen years ago, we chose Ingres because it was the best product with the best support for our needs. Over the years, as we have grown, the product has grown with us. From the beginning, Ingres has been there, providing us with excellent support, ease of use, stability, performance, and cost-efficiency." Kerkhof observes that Ingres is a workhorse that keeps the college's mission-critical applications readily accessible. "There was a time when we didn't have a database manager and the system ran itself without any problems," he recalls. "It just kept running."

About Ingres Corporation
Ingres Corporation is a leading provider of open source information management services to the enterprise. Built on over 25 years of technology investment, Ingres is a leader in software and service innovation, providing the enterprise with proven reliability combined with the value and flexibility of open source.

The Ingres Database offers high-volume transaction processing, high availability, multi-platform support, and security for mission-critical application deployments. Our software and support services are designed to provide customers these enterprise-class features at a lower total cost of ownership. We also offer our database software as part of integrated software appliances, enabling customers to rapidly and cost-effectively deploy, manage, and maintain open source solutions throughout the enterprise.

These appliances are the result of our work with leading business intelligence and content management providers. Our business intelligence appliance delivers advanced reporting and data analysis capabilities; while our appliance for content management allows for the management of structured and unstructured data.

As an open source company, Ingres has an active community of developers that continually test our code, influence our product roadmap by submitting specific feature requests, and contribute code for inclusion in our software. When integrating their applications with our database, developers increase their productivity given their direct access to our source code.

We provide dedicated, professional support on a 24/7 basis to our enterprise customers and ISVs in 20 languages and more than 50 countries. We offer our customers a variety of support options ranging from online access to on-site support.

Ingres is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has major development, sales, and support centers throughout the world, supporting thousands of customers in the United States and internationally. For more information: www.ingres.com