Exploratory Study to the Common Architecture of University Computerized Systems and the Solution to its Architectural Problems

This research has been focused on exploring the common architecture of university computerized systems (UCSs) to discover the common gaps and problems available in the architecture of most universities worldwide. Three universities have been selected to study and explore the common architecture of their systems; in addition to the literature of other universities. As a result, there are several problems in this architecture; these problems are direct results of tight-coupling, stand-alone applications, integration gap and interoperability gap. Therefore, this research has presented Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a solution to the mentioned problems. The solution has been described and a prototype has been designed, implemented and tested successfully as a proof to concept.