Case Study: Scottish Qualifications Authority achieves scalable, high-speed exam processing with Actian Ingres Database

Actian Helps the Scottish Qualifications Authority Pass Every Test

The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) certifies the skills and qualifications of hundreds of thousands of students each year and faced a pressing need to expand its bespoke exam-processing system as subject offerings, student numbers and international work grew. SQA required greater database capacity and development agility to deliver new functionality reliably—there was effectively no margin for error when handling high-stakes exam results.

SQA continued with Actian Ingres Database and Ingres OpenROAD, leveraging their ease of management, scalability and parallel-processing features to add web-based query access, support roughly 3,000 remote clients at 1,700 sites and grow the database by about 3.5 million multi-faceted records. The move to online submissions and partitioned tables improved speed and reduced re-keying errors, enabling faster quality assurance and supporting SQA’s expansion into markets such as China, Trinidad and Tobago, Botswana and Jordan.

Scottish Qualifications Authority

Tony Douglas

Senior Enterprise Systems Manager