Top N Things You Need to Know About Using the GI A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), Project Implementation Plan (PIP) and GI Cover Letter must be reviewed and signed at the beginning of a project involving the GI. A GI service is the unit of work you want to accomplish, for example, getStudentAddresses. A service represents a remote procedure (or function) call. In a perfect world the GI would be comprised only of services and we could rely on people to use them responsibly. A GI application is a security profile i.e. a list of services that will be allowed to call the GI from a given IP address. GI Applications are needed because GI services can't be available for unchecked use. If a GI service is capable of updating data, it must also be capable of locking the data in a separate call. Data integrity can't be ensured if the lock and update occur in the same call, there's no way to tell what's being updated in the single call scenario. GI services capable of updates start with the word "manage". All applications must implement the getBalancedURL service for load balancing. Applications must be reviewed by and approved by the AIS Web Application Turnover Committee before moving to production. Depending on the complexity of the project and sensitivity of the data more than one meeting may be required. Applications aren't available in production until all the Data Stewards associated will all the services used by the application have electronically signed. You should contact all Data Stewards at the outset of your project in order to assure a smooth approval process when it comes time to move to production. Application's must be run through acceptance before being moved to production All documentation in the GI Management System must be filled out before moving to production GI code is moved to production on Wednesday. The GI is subject to the same change freezes as other AIS systems. The freezes generally correspond to the beginning of fall semester, the end of fall semester through the beginning of spring semester and then end of spring semester. During a freeze changes to production requires special emergency approval. Moving code to production and getting security approval are different. Production code can't be accessed until the approvals are complete. The flipside is also true; approvals for your application may be completed before the code for your new services is available in production. The GI production servers are only accessible from machines that have been scanned and reside on an AIS Trusted Network. As a general rule your desktop and/or development server doesn't qualify. Finally, if you have any questions about the above items or any other issues regarding the GI, please contact the GI Administrator (gen-interface@psu.edu).

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