EDH (Electronic Document Handling) is the
three-letter acronym given to CERN's internal e-business
application. EDH currently has over 6000 users. There are
over 1200 different users a day. An new request is processed
every 20 seconds. EDH is the multilingual, web-based intelligent
solution to CERN's business processes providing fast, efficient
and streamlined organization-wide electronic workflow.
History of EDH
EDH was developed as a key component of the
Advanced Informatics Support (AIS) project, which aimed
to provide cost effective user-friendly solutions for reducing
administrative overheads throughout the organization. From
leave requests to purchase requisitions, over 100 different
forms were in use at CERN. These were filled in manually,
retyped, approved, signed, and finally retyped again into
the appropriate system - not the most efficient way of doing
things. EDH's objective was to replace
these paper based business procedures with streamlined electronic
workflow, validating data against corporate databases and
automatically generating the end-result with minimum human
intervention.
The first implementation of EDH, launched
in 1992, ran on CERN's central mainframe computer. Soon
after, as central computing gave way to distributed computing,
this was replaced by a client-server version, with everyone
at CERN having an EDH application on their desktop. In 1998,
as CERN moved towards becoming the world's first truly global
laboratory, EDH moved to the Web - itself invented and developed
at CERN in the early 1990s. The year
2000/2001 sees the completion of EDH's Web version which
will now become the standard EDH system for CERN users world-wide.
EDH Security
Authenticating the identity of users is fundamental
to any e-business application. Security was one of the first
issues to be addressed during the development of EDH.
The resulting EDH User Login proved to be so successful
that it was adopted by all of CERN's other web based administrative
applications and was re-christened 'The
Common Login'.
