MaineStreet Campus Solutions Maintenance: Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does "all Campus Solutions applications will be unavailable while maintenance is performed" mean? Why are the applications not available?
[Note: Campus Solutions includes Admissions, Student Records, Student Financials, Financial Aid, Class Search, Reporting, and Student and Faculty Self-Service.]
About five times a year Oracle provides updates to the Campus Solutions part of our Oracle/PeopleSoft software system (MaineStreet). These updates include modifications referred to as "patches and fixes"--improvements and enhancements, updated government regulations, and corrections to problems Oracle's end-users may have noted.
An example: Oracle continues to tweak class search options, so there are frequent patches to that application.
Another example: At least four times a year the U.S. government issues Financial Aid Regulatory Releases, governing how financial aid is disbursed to our students. These regulations must be promptly incorporated into the Financial Aid portion of MaineStreet so the University of Maine System can maintain compliance with federal requirements.
All of these changes and updates are applied to the production database--the repository for the MaineStreet applications we use. In order to apply patches and fixes, we must "shut the door" to the production database. When this database is being patched or fixed, it cannot be accessed by end-users for any Campus Solutions application.
These times of shut-down will always be scheduled for weekends, generally beginning at 6:00 p.m. on Friday and lasting through Saturday.
Historically, Sunday mornings are also reserved for routine hardware and software maintenance in the University of Maine System. Users should be aware that system unavailability is always possible during the regularly scheduled Sunday morning maintenance window.
Q: What happens with the patches and fixes?
The technical staff first makes a copy of the Campus Solutions production database. This "fix" database is where the Oracle patches and fixes are initially applied.
When this is complete, then "afterpatches" must be created. Here we really appreciate the importance of implementing a "vanilla" system with as few campus-specific modifications as possible. Any mods created by our technical team for the campus(es) may have been overwritten or affected by the Oracle updates, and all modifications must be re-examined and re-applied to our system.
This is a painstaking process requiring technical team expertise followed by testing by subject matter experts in each area followed by more testing by individual campus representatives to ensure that all screens still look and work as intended.
After the patches and fixes have been applied, the afterpatches completed, and the testing done and signed off on by campus reps in the fix database, the production database is shut down while these patches and fixes are moved into production. Once the patches are in production, final testing is done to make sure the patches were moved in successfully.
The barricades are then removed and MaineStreet is open once again. Until the next round.
Q: When is the next round for Campus Solutions? And the one after that?
Through the rest of 2009, here is the anticipated schedule:
| Patches and fixes scheduled to arrive System office | End-user testing dates | MaineStreet CS down for maintenance |
| June 26 | July 10, 13-15 | 6:00 p.m. July 17 through 18 |
| August 28 | September 22-25, 28-29 (change from original plan) | System will not be down (change from original plan) |
| November 6 | November 23-25, 30 | 6:00 p.m. December 4 through 5 |
September 22, 2009