Release Date: June 27, 2020
UIN Services API Modernized
As part of the overall enterprise systems modernization effort underway by the A&M System’s Office of Information Technology, the UIN Services application programming interface (API) used by UIN Manager, member institutions’ student systems, and other IT applications, was migrated from the IBM mainframe to a modern database platform.
This release is intended to be almost completely behind-the-scenes. Users of the UIN Manager application and the UIN Services API should notice few if any changes.
That said, three changes to the UIN Services API are worth calling out:
- The UIN will no longer force all alphabetic characters into uppercase. Names and comments will remain in the case in which they are provided.
- The API can now accept accent characters with an English equivalent; e.g., ñ and á.
- Search functionality for names with space and dash characters was improved.
In addition, some behind-the-scenes work was done to prepare for future releases:
- Future versions of the UIN will be able to capture longer first and last names, which are currently limited to 15 and 30 characters, respectively.
- Future versions of the UIN will be able to capture the entire middle name rather than just the middle initial.
- In addition to SSN, future versions of UIN Manager will be able to capture additional identifying documents such as a driver’s license or passport.