University Payment System¶
This page gives an overview of the University Payment System, describing its current status, where and how it's developed and deployed, and who is responsible for maintaining it.
Service Description¶
UPS allows individuals within the organisation to make a one off payment to people. Once approved by finance, payments are loaded into CHRIS and paid via the payroll module.
Service Status¶
The University Payment System is currently generally available and is live . The Health of the application is AT RISK, as Framework is out of date, Can't be updated without a full rewrite.
Contact¶
Issues discovered in the service or new feature requests should be opened as GitLab issues in the application repository.
Environments¶
The University Payment System is currently deployed to the following environments:
| Name | URL | Supporting VMs |
|---|---|---|
| Name | URL | Supporting VMs |
| ----------- | ------------------ | --------------- |
| Production | https://hrsystems.admin.cam.ac.uk/ups | silver.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk ellington.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk |
| Staging | https://staging.hrsystems.admin.cam.ac.uk/ups | jackson.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk |
| Testing | https://testing.hrsystems.admin.cam.ac.uk/ups | roach.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk |
Source code¶
The source code for the University Payment System is spread over the following repositories:
| Repository | Description |
|---|---|
| Application Server | The source code for the main application server |
Technologies used¶
The following gives an overview of the technologies the University Payment System is built on.
| Category | Language | Framework(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Application | Java 8 | Play Framework 1.5, Hibernate 5.2.10, Lucene 5.3, Apache Ivy 2.4.0 |
Operational documentation¶
The following gives an overview of how the University Payment System is deployed and maintained.
How and where the University Payment System is deployed¶
Play! Framework can automatically generate a WAR file for deployment. Batch files (see below) have been created to automate this process.
Development¶
- Execute
{Project Working Copy}/build/create_war_dev.bat - Output is to
{Project Working Copy}/build/dist/ups_dev.war
UAT (Play)¶
- Execute
{Project Working Copy}/build/create_war_uat.bat - Output is to
{Project Working Copy}/build/dist/ups_uat.war
Live¶
- Execute
{Project Working Copy}/build/create_war_prod.bat - Output is to
{Project Working Copy}/build/dist/ups_prod.war
Deploying a new release¶
Application Servers¶
The hrutils application is deployed to the same tomcat instance as UPS.
Application Server Scripts¶
Given that this app is relatively small and usage is light the application is deployed to the UPS tomcat and therefore the UPS scripts can be used to stop, start and deploy this app.
How To Deploy WAR (Post-Build)¶
Info
The batch file mentioned below (push_war_dev_???.bat) assume an SSH key file exists for
authentication (see REMOTE_PASSWORD_PARAM environment variable). Change the value as appropriate.
Development¶
Execute {Project Working Copy}/build/push_war_dev_???.bat. This copies ups_dev.war to
/apps/ups/tomcat/webapps (on hoy/hunter)
UAT (Play)¶
Execute {Project Working Copy}/build/push_war_uat_???.bat. This copies ups_uat.war to
/apps/ups/tomcat/webapps (on hogwood/hendricks)
Live¶
Execute {Project Working Copy}/build/push_war_prod_???.bat. This copies ups_live.war to
/apps/ups/tomcat/webapps (on hampton/hume)```
Monitoring¶
Load Balancer¶
Round-robin load balancing of HTTP traffic with sticky sessions (stickiness controlled by load balancer). SSL offloading is also performed by the load balancer.
HTTP Headers set (for use by application). See Wikipedia for a full list of HTTP Headers.
X-Forwarded-Proto - a de facto standard for identifying the originating protocol of an HTTP
request, since a reverse proxy (load balancer) may communicate with a web server using HTTP even if
the request to the reverse proxy is HTTPS.
X-Forwarded-For - a de facto standard for identifying the originating IP address of a client
connecting to a web server through an HTTP proxy or load balancer.
| Database Servers | JDBC Connection String | DB User |
|---|---|---|
| Development | Not available at the moment | chris_utils |
| UAT | N/A | chris_utils |
| Live | jdbc:oracle:thin:@(DESCRIPTION = (ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP) (HOST = ocm.internal.admin.cam.ac.uk) (PORT = 1531)) (CONNECT_DATA = (SERVICE_NAME = HR_LIVE))) | chris_utils |
Service Management and tech lead¶
The primary user for the University Payment System is Alexsis Dicken
The service owner for the University Payment System is Simon Virr.
The service manager for the University Payment System is Andrew Crook.
The tech lead for the University Payment System is Simon Redhead.
The following engineers have operational experience with the University Payment System and are able to respond to support requests or incidents: