12296

12296© 2015 ELLUCIAN. CONFIDENTIAL & PROPRIETARY | Session ID

Advanced Argos Reporting for Degree Works

Josh Whitlock

East Tennessee State University

April 10, 2015

Session ID: 12296


Session rules of etiquette

• Please turn off your cell phone/pager

• If you must leave the session early, please do so as discreetly as possible

• Please avoid side conversation during the session

Thank you for your cooperation!


1 Introduction

2 Finding Degree Works Table Information

3 Selected Data Dictionary Views

4 Linking Reports Back to Views

5 Summary

Agenda


Introduction

• Purpose of this Presentation

• Provide method of understanding the Degree Works database better through the Argos reporting tool.

• Benefits of Attending this Session

• Learn about the Data Dictionary which can be accessed in any Oracle database, not just Degree Works


Finding Degree Works Table Information


Argos & Degree Works

• Degree Works provides good reports– Data is per student though– Never enough data when you’ve got a problem

• Advantages of Argos– Aggregated data– Helpful in debugging problems


Argos & Degree Works

• How do you know what to pull from where?– Visual Designer

• See schemas and tables– One table at a time– Lots of tables– No “search for a column” option– Lose your SQL if you were using “Free Type”


Visual Designer


Data Dictionary

• What if you could get all of the column names, table names, etc. into one, searchable Excel file?– Use the Oracle metadata / data dictionary

• All_objects• All_tables• All_tab_cols• All_views


Data Dictionary

• The data dictionary is part of the SYS schema in Oracle

• Contains information about database objects• There are some caveats in searching the data

dictionary in Argos though– Invalid Class Typecast exception


Selected Data Dictionary Views


Data Dictionary

• All_objects– Get all of the objects that are available


All_objects


Data Dictionary

• All_tables– Get all of the tables that are available


All_tables


Data Dictionary

• All_tab_cols– Get all of the tables that are available along

with the columns in those tables


All_tab_cols


Data Dictionary

• All_views– View source code for all Views


All_views


All_views

• Memo?– When you execute the report, you will see the

text of the view in the CSV file


All_views

• The original query does not actually pull all of the text


All_views

• Work around?– Use xmltable


All_views - xmltable


Caveats

• Invalid Class Typecast


Caveats

• Work around to exception– Specify column names in query


Caveats

• Schema for Degree Works tables is Dwschema

• Narrow your query by the schema owner to get all the relevant tables


Data Dictionary

• Dictionary for Data Dictionary?– Sys.dictionary


Other Useful Views

• Sys.all_tab_comments• Sys.all_col_comments

– Currently DegreeWorks does not have any comments on DWSCHEMA tables or columns

• It would be nice to have


Linking Reports Back to Views


Linking Reports Back to Views

• You’ve got easy access to all the views… so what?– How do you link what you see on a degree

audit back to the right view?– Clues are in the HTML source


Notes Report

• The Need:– Advisors are entering notes into Degree Works– Several Issues:

• Notes are not synced with Banner… should they be?• How many notes are there currently?• Which department is entering the most notes?• Which advisor is entering the most notes?


Basic Steps for Creating Report

• Perform a program audit in Degree Works for a student with notes

• Identify where the data on the audit is coming from– Look at the HTML source for the audit– Search your new metadata CSV file

• Create the report– Visual Designer or Free-Type SQL


Notes Report


Final Argos Report


Summary

• The Data Dictionary can be used to quickly find where data is stored in the database.

• The Degree Works front-end interface provides clues for finding the back-end data.


Questions & Answers


Thank you!

Josh [email protected]

Evelyn Roach

[email protected]

Please complete the online session evaluation form.

Session ID 12296

12296

Documents

Transcript of 12296