1. Best Practices in Higher Education Student Data Warehousing Forum Northwestern University October 21-22, 2003 FIRST QUESTIONS Emily Thomas Stony Brook University

2. First Questions What is a data warehouse? Why does a college or university need a student data warehouse? What can a college or university do with a student data warehouse? What are the dimensions of best practice? What, if anything, is different about student data warehousing?

3. What is a data warehouse? A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant collection of data in support of management’s decisions. (W.H. Inmon, Building the Data Warehouse)

4. What is a data warehouse? A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant collection of data to describe an organization’s activities and support of management’s decisions.

5. What is a data warehouse? A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant collection of derived data to describe an organization’s activities and support of management’s decisions.

6. What is a data warehouse? A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant collection of derived data that are managed and institutionally recognized as a shared data resource used to describe an organization’s activities and support of management’s decisions.

7. What is a data warehouse? A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant collection of data in support of management’s decisions. (W.H. Inmon, Building the Data Warehouse) A data warehouse is a subject oriented, integrated, non-volatile, and time variant collection of derived data that are managed and institutionally recognized as a shared data resource used to describe an organization’s activities and support management’s decisions.

8. Technical reasons for a data warehouse 1.Production system performance 2.Reporting performance 3.Consistent data definitions 4.Explicit data definitions 5.Flexibility 6.Frozen data 7.Access with multiple tools 8.Efficient data storage

9. Organizational reasons for a data warehouse Organizations need people to understand them. For understanding, people need information. For information, people need easy access to good data. “Information and knowledge are quintessentially human creations; we will never be good at managing them unless we give people a primary role.” (Thomas Davenport, Information Ecology)

10. Reporting Dimensions Who does the reporting? What is the reporting objective? Are the questions ad hoc or recurring? What is the typical output format? What is the timing and source of the data? What technical skill and tools does the user have?

11. Reporting Categories 1.Operations Management 2.Operations Analysis 3.Management/Executive Reporting 4.Management Analysis 5.Analytics

12. Dimensions of Best Practice: Data Warehouse Content and Structure 1.What is the content of the data warehouse? 2.What reporting periods are used? 3.What history is included? 4.What is the structure of the data model? 5.How many tables are there? 6.Are facts and dimensions conformed?

13. Data Management 7.How are the source data extracted, transformed, indexed and loaded? 8.How are warehouse data refreshed? 9.How are warehouse data backed up and recovered? 10.How is data quality maintained?

14. Warehouse Management 11.Who manages the warehouse? 12.What staff effort supports it? 13.How was the warehouse designed? 14.How are decisions about changes made and implemented?

15. Warehouse Use 15.Is the warehouse an institutional resource? 16.Are data marts built from the warehouse? 17.How are warehouse data documented? 18.How is data access facilitated? 19.How is data security maintained? 20.What reporting tools are used?

16. What (if anything) is different about student data warehouses? Size – small transaction base? Period – snapshots vs closeouts? Longitudinal data – especially important? Resources – limited, but higher education has Institutional Research?