Questions About Reporting Processes/Procedures

Questions about reporting processes/procedures?

Please visit the Business Intelligence Committee website. The link is found on the SLU ITS website: www.slu.edu/its. Click on About ITS on the left side of the page then click on IT Governance and Committees on the right side of the page.

Operational Data Store Quick Reference Guide

Purpose - give staff members an overview of how to use the ODS Data Description webpage to understand and investigate the data contained in the ODS.

ODS Data Descriptions Page

·  Commonly referred to as “Metadata”

·  Does not give you access to the ODS

·  Describes what data is contained in the ODS

·  Descriptions are grouped similarly to the Banner module concept

The ODS Data Descriptions main page:

Drilling down into one of the data groups reveals Reporting View names. Each view will be accompanied by supporting information

·  Description – describes the type of data in the view

·  Key & Frequency – describes how the data in this view is organized

o  One row per person – there will be at most one entry per person in this view

o  One row per person per address type – a person might be in this view multiple times if they have multiple address types in the system

·  Recommended Search Columns – Searching for data by this information will yield quicker results than not doing so. You can search on other columns but the search will be slower. There could be multiple recommended search columns per reporting view which will be separated by a comma. Recommended search columns can also be made up of multiple columns.

o  ENTITY_UID – one “recommended” search column

o  ENTITY_UID, ADDRESS_TYPE – two “recommended” search columns

§  ENTITY_UID

§  ADDRESS_TYPE

o  PERSON_UID, PERSON_UID CONTACT_TYPE – two “recommended” search column

§  PERSON_UID

§  PERSON_UID CONTACT_TYPE - contains two columns; if you want to search on CONTACT_TYPE, in order to speed up the search you should do it in combination with PERSON_UID if you can. Searching on CONTACT_TYPE alone will be slower.

(Continued on reverse side…)

Drilling down into one of the Reporting View names reveals information about each individual column in the reporting view. Each column will be accompanied by supporting information

·  Target Column – column name within the ODS Reporting View

·  Business Definition – description of the column as used in the specific view

·  Database Data Type – description of the format of the data

·  Source Name – where the data came from; this could be a Banner table/view name or a function name. A function is where a piece of data had some business logic applied to it. For example, GPA. GPA is a calculated value.

·  Source Column – If the data came from a Banner table/view, then this represents the column in that table/view. If the data was derived in a function, then the function name is given.

How to find the ODS Reporting View that corresponds to data on a Banner form:

1.  Go to the Banner form that has the data you want to reference and put your cursor in the field that you are looking for

2.  Go to Help, Dynamic Help Query

3.  Look at the Block Name and the field name

4.  Go to the ODS Metadata and pull up the appropriate area

5.  Scroll to the Source Reports under the Reporting views and click on the source report that was listed in the Block Name above

6.  The Target column will then list each view that contains the fields from that block