Prototype for Research Infrastructure Databank Service

Data integration is a common process for projects aiming at reporting. National Research Information Hub is an example of data integration projects, which aim to provide insight and uncover interdependencies in the education field in Finland. A part of this project - Research Infrastructure (RI) Databank Service - focuses on harvesting data related to research infrastructures. Recent changes in RI Databank Service scope introduced organizational and architectural challenges implying automated integrations with partner universities’ systems. This thesis aims to address new requirements by creating a prototype for the next improved version of RI Databank Service application. The goal of the prototype implementation is to evaluate architectural approach viability and to verify the technological compatibility of the software components. The thesis is a report of lessons learnt during the service development. The results show that the application created in this project is able to integrate with common data format used in universities’ systems. Also, it is capable of adjusting to the changing data model. Performance testing has confirmed that data transformation speed satisfies the requirements. In contrast with the previous service version, the prototype is simpler, despite the overall increase in the functionality. Usage of code generation tools accelerated the development process. Built prototype will be used as a base for further RI Databank Service project development at CSC