National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS)

Overview

National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) is a national application processing and tracking system. It is designed to allow all K-12 teachers in the United States and in the overseas Military community to apply to become a certified teacher in any discipline while allowing them to monitor the progress of their application. NBPTS provides administrator’s full capabilities to maintain and update all applicants’ records. The system also provides administrators the ability to define new tests and the rules governing those tests, change scoring factors and define scoring engine modifications.

Technical Solution

The system is internet-based, operating from an Oracle 9i database and utilizing the Oracle 9iAS web/application server. The application was developed using a combination of Oracle forms/reports, PL/SQL, and HTML. The Diligent team provided a complete, turn-key solution, including:

• Requirements analysis
• Database design and development
• Application design and development
• Creating and directing test activities
• System and database architecture design and implementation
• Application training for customers
• Configuration management and maintenance of application
• On-going system enhancements and maintenance

Diligent designed, built, and deployed the NBPTS Internet-based application with a highly flexible data architecture to support a business rule based solution. In-depth research of the legacy system was performed to help the customer better define the data requirements. Oracle Designer 6i was used to develop the logical and physical database model. The application framework, business logic and GUI were developed in Oracle Forms/Reports and PL/SQL. The Oracle menu system was used to enhance the security of the application and data.

Diligent Impact

Diligent was responsible for the hardware system selection and capacity planning, Oracle 9iAS software installation, configuration, and support. Diligent also provides database software installation, configuration, and support, database design and implementation, database performance tuning, operating system and database fail-over architecture planning, and implementation and database backup and recovery planning and implementation. Diligent provides on-site database administration and monitoring support for 24x7 online capability. Since the application was written in Oracle forms/reports and PL/SQL and care was taken during development, it may be ported to any operating system that is running the Oracle tool sets. This allows for more cost-effective server selection as growth occurs. Diligent developed and delivered training for application administrators