TruView registration problems are resolved!

Many students experienced problems with slow access to TruView and interrupted sessions during Spring 2005 registration. IT Services became aware of the problem and worked with SunGard SCT support to find a solution. The cause of the problem was found and corrected during registration on November 16.

The performance degradation on TruView was caused by one of the features of TruView, the customizable content channels. As users log into TruView, the content on the MyView Tab is downloaded from various sources, some on-campus and others off-campus. It was the increased requests for content on the MyView tab that caused the system to slowdown to an unacceptable level of service. The content that comes from non-Truman websites cannot be accessed as quickly by the TruView system. With the increased number of students logging in and accessing the MyView tab during the registration period, the remote servers were unable to keep up with TruView's requests for all the necessary information which in turn prevented displaying of the TruView interface. The problem was not with the TruView server but with the connection to the remote servers or with the remote servers themselves.

IT Services removed the channel that was causing most of the problems and has rewritten all of the main channels to pull their content from a cached version that is stored on a Truman server. All cached channels are updated at least hourly.

Because of these changes, TruView will now load faster, even during times of high load. TruView was designed to handle thousands of users at the same time, and ITS does not foresee these problems reoccurring during registration next semester or during other periods of high loads such as when final grades are released.