IT system for elections within the Church of Sweden

1
IT system for elections within the Church of
Sweden

• Rolf WastesonSema InfoData ABSweden
• rolf.wasteson_at_infodata.sema.se

2
Sema

• French-Brittish company undergoing a friendly
  takeover from Schlumberger
• 21000 employees in more than 25 countries
• Business Consulting Systems integration
  Outsourcing Software products

3
InfoData

• Part of Sema e-Business Unit WebTec
• The leading Swedish supplier of online business
  information
• Supplier of direct marketing services (addresses,
  register updating and matching, printing)
• Building portals specialized in the content
• Large experience in web, wap, voice and cti
• Running Call center

4
Sema - Church of Sweden

• Sema InfoData main supplier of IT services to the
  Church of Sweden
• Major business relations since 1980th

5
The history of the Church of Sweden

• Protestantic since the age of king Gustav Wasa in
  16th Century
• The Church has been part of the state since then
• Divorce 1 January 2000
• Now a faith community among others

6
Elections to decision making bodies 16 September
2001

• Previously run by the National Tax Board
• The Church supported by Sema InfoData now
  organizes the elections
• The largest election ever done in Sweden(except
  for the number of persons voting)

7
Support system tasks

• Register the election organization
  parlamentary bodies (3 500) constituencies (3
  000) electoral areas (3 500) voting-stations
  (4 500)
• Register the parties (1200)
• Register the lists of candidates (8 000)
• Register all candidates (80 000)

8
Support system tasks (contd.)

• Prepare printing orginals for all voting-papers
  (8 000 editions, 200 000 000 copies)
• Prepare printing files for voting cards (6 100
  000)
• Prepare printing files for electoral registers to
  all voting-stations (3 500)
• Counting of votes
• Assign the seats

9
The organization of the Church of Sweden

• Complicated organizational structure
• Dynamic organization - gt600 changes 2002
• The elections are to the organzation valid from
  2002
• Elections to four levels Parishes
  Communities Dioceses Church Assembly

10
Compressed time scale

• 10 bigger than general elections on half the
  time
• A chalenge for the organization of the Church

11
System structure

• The system consist of The distributed
  membership register with a centralized update
  system A register of the organization and the
  elected representatives A register of the
  electional organization, parties and candidates
  A system to handle the results and to assign the
  seats
• All subsystems consists of both online routines
  and batch routines.
• All online routines are using Web technique

12
Online routines

• All online routiones are built with Informix
  WebConnect
• WebConnect was choosen as the foundation for Web
  applications in 1997
• WebConnect has a lousy programming language
• The developement environment, Data Director for
  Web, is a buggy tool

13
The internals of WebConnect
Web browserInternet Explorer 5.0
Web-serverNetscape Enterprise
HTML pages
http//benhur/wbdaemon?MI_NAMEfetchp123
Run wbdaemon
DataTable tab
Web-connect Interpret template
Include datafrom table tabfrom row123
Fetch templatefetch.html
row
value


123
Priest


HTML- templatefetch.html


Informix database
fetch.htmllthtmlgtltbodygt lt?misql sqlselect
value from tab where rowpgt lth1gtThe value is
1lt/h1gt lt?/misqlgt lt/bodygtlt/htmlgt
14
WebConnect applications

• The WebConnect code contains SQL that is
  interpreted every time it is executed
• Performance (and code readabillity) will be
  enhanced by using stored procedures
• Original application did not make use of it

15
Batch routines

• Written in different techniques
• Stored procedures
• SQL scripts to be run in dbaccess
• Shell scripts with extensive use of awk
  programming, Unix sort, join and merge
• Very few routines written in traditional
  programming languages (C and 4GL)
• Our home-brewed RAD concept

16
Access control system

• A very flexible and powerfull access control
  system was implemented when develping the
  election system
• Concepts of rules and organizational hierarchies
  are used
• Implemented by using userdefined tags in
  WebConnect app-pages
• Re-use of original user authorization structure
  dramativcally shortened the development time
• Performance implications because of need of
  dynamic authorization check in every program call

17
Software

• Sun Solaris 2.6
• Informix IDS 7.31
• Informix WebConnect
• Informix 4GL
• Sun Workshop C GNU C
• The software will be upgraded in late autumn 2001
  to
• Sun Solaris 8
• Informix Internet Foundation 2000
• Informix 4GL (new version)

18
Hardware

• Sun Microsystems Enterprise 4500
• 4 400 MHz Sparc II CPUs
• 3 Gb RAM
• 372 Gb T3 disk units with optical connections,
  RAID 5
• All harware is built with redundancy for minimum
  system failures

19
Performance enhancements

• Severe performance problems in the beginning.
  Solved by
• A more powerfull machine
• Utilizing stored procedures in WebConnect
  applications
• Unloading large tables, manipulate files by Unix
  sort, join and awk instead of Informix SQL
• Optimizing WebServer behavior
• Rewrite SQL to better utilize indexes
• Gain performance by new indexes
• Using the TYPE(raw) property on tables in IDS
  7.31

20
Project organisation

• Project manager
• 4 co-project managers
• 10 programmers
• 2 full time persons working with versions
  management and testing
• 2 database technicians
• 2 system managers
• 2 production assistants
• A total of 25 persons involved in the project,
  many on full time
• Almost 15 man years spent on development

21
Application tests

• Extensive testing
• End users involved in tests during developement
  phase
• Full scale acceptance tests
• A total of more than 25 different application
  databases version logistics extremly
  complicated

22
Problems

• The complicated organizational structure of the
  Church
• The moving target, the constantly changing
  organization
• Performance
• Testing vastly more time consuming than
  calculated
• The tight time scale
• The changing demands from the Church

23
Experiences

• WebConnect not really suited for such a large
  application
• Today we would probably have choosen other tools,
  utilizing Java techniques
• WebConnect good for non programmers
• Too much time spent on administative matters with
  Informix, both contractual and support
• Very little knowledge of WebConnect in Informix
  organization
• Web browsers differs very much from version to
  version

24

• End
• Questions?