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The online course registration system at my school was like this. Web frontend that recorded transactions and dumped them to the mainframe at night.

The whole student management system at my uni (which was implemented at the start of this year) is like this too, down between 2am and 4am to 'synchronise the timetabling system'. I think it's to do with the massive Oracle backend, but I don't really understand the need.

Oh, yours was only down for two hours? Ours was only available from 8am to 8pm. Not the greatest option for a night owl like myself.

I doubt that, and there is also a EU interface to VAT ID confirmation that is 24/7.

My guess would be that they run backups over night