The Brief
CUOL asked OWA to migrate its existing Clearing web form and administration portals from Oracle / APEX to SQL Server and other modern technologies. The process needed to ensure all existing functionality and logic continued to work for applicants and Clearing administrators while allowing new functionality to be developed for the UCAS Clearing process.
CUOL also requested that OWA provide monthly hosting and technical support for the system alongside enhanced support over the specific Clearing period.
About CUOL
CUOL is a research university based in London, accepting both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Every August, as part of the ‘Clearing’ process, CUOL receives thousands of applications to study via a web form – the majority of these are sent during the first few hours after Clearing opens. Admissions tutors then use the administration portal to review the applications and make offers accordingly.
OWA has worked with CUOL since 2020, initially supporting the existing Clearing web form and administration portals before undertaking further development to provide additional functionality and hosting of the Oracle / APEX system.
Our Approach
Use of the Clearing portal occurs intensively and almost exclusively during a few hours of a single day. It was therefore vital to ensure the redevelopment was rigorously tested for performance and correctness – both within the underlying database and the functionality made available to applicants and staff.
OWA recommended an extensive review of the existing Oracle implementation, including its tables, stored procedures and other functionalities, to ensure successful migration with no loss of data or changes to logic held within the database. A number of commercial and bespoke tools were deployed to guarantee consistency between the old and new databases while test migrations were carried out to verify correctness when this was performed on live data.
To ensure the system could handle the expected traffic on Clearing day, we analysed visitor patterns from the previous year to understand both the volume of anticipated traffic and the specific requests made to the platform, and the load this would place on the underlying resources. We were then able to simulate this activity in a separate load-testing environment to identify and resolve any issues or bottlenecks with the current platform and ensure it could comfortably serve the traffic received on Clearing day.
We also recommended the project follow OWASP ASVS guidance, ensuring secure development practices were used and all internal testing was compliant with the standard.
How we helped
A rigorous investigation and review process was applied to the original database and Clearing system to fully understand existing usage patterns and establish a clear plan for the migration.
Extensive automated and manual testing of the new system was carried out to ensure the redeveloped functionality matched the original system and was secure and performant.
The provision of enhanced support for the application and hosting platform during the peak Clearing period allowed CUOL to feel confident that any queries or concerns could be quickly resolved.
