Banner and External
Application
Integration
William Boyd

• Presenter: William Boyd, Senior Software
Developer @ Liberty University , Learning
Management Systems team
• LU: located in Lynchburg, VA
• ~12,000 on-campus and ~58,000 online students

• ~50,000 – 55,000 users actively using Bb this fall.
• We host Bb on a load balanced cluster with 6 app servers and 4 db servers.
• Bb is used by our residential students, but is the primary learning delivery platform for online students

• Automated data capture from Banner for snapshot automation.
• Building Block for posting final grades from
Blackboard into Banner.
• Queries for presenting Blackboard data in a widget for an external portal.

• Banner = our “master of record”
– Users
– Courses
– Registrations/Enrollments
– Grades/Transcripts
• Records of all these need to be maintained in
Banner, but we need to integrate with Bb

• Since Banner is our master of record, our integration begins with the feed of data from
Banner to Bb
• We use Bb Snapshot to feed users, courses, and enrollments from Banner to Bb
• A java process runs nightly, querying the data from Banner and building the snapshot files which are then imported by Bb Snapshot

• We are quickly outgrowing the snapshot-style data feed
– ~350k users, ~32k courses, ~750k student enrollments and 74k instructor enrollments)
– takes almost 40 minutes to run the entire process
(the bulk of which is Bb snapshot importing the data files)

• Whatever method is used to import data into Bb from an external system, it is crucial to be able to associate that data with the master of record data later on
– Allows other integration points dealing with that data down the road
– Luckily, Bb provides a way to do this

• batch_uid is a property of users and courses in
Bb.
– When data is fed to Bb, Put an external key in that field that will identify the record it came from on the master of record system (such as Banner)
– Snapshot external_person_key and external_course_key go into batch_uid on users and course_main tables respectively
– Accessible through Building Blocks API:
User.getBatchUid(), Course.getBatchUid()

• For our Banner – Bb Integration
– We put the Banner student id in Bb’s batch_uid for users (ex. 160023)
• in Banner it is saturn.spriden.spriden_id
• all users have one, not just students
– Banner doesn’t have a surrogate key for courses, but the unique identifier for courses is saturn.ssbsect.ssbsect_term_code and saturn.ssbsect.ssbsect_crn.
• These are fixed length, so we concatenate them for the course batch_uid in Bb (ex. 20113020006)

• We use course cross-listing in Banner, which introduces a complication.
• Cross-listing involves two course sections in
Banner which share resources (professor, meeting location/time, and most importantly Bb course shell).
• This means we are tasked with mapping two or more courses in Banner to one course shell in
Bb.

• At all integration points, cross listed courses will need to be treated differently.
– So make batch_uid follow a particular format so cross listed courses can be identified programmatically on the Bb side
– In Banner, a set of cross listed courses is identified by saturn.ssbxlst.ssbxlst_term_code and saturn.ssbxlst.ssbxlst_xlst_group
– We chose this as a batch_uid for cross listed courses: term_code + “XLST” + xlst_group (ex.
201130XLST1C)

• Final grades need to be recorded in Banner, but primary faculty interface is Bb (gradebook, etc.)
• Post Final Grades building block provides a page which allows faculty to enter a letter grade and submit that data to Banner
• Uses course batch_uid and user batch_uid of students to map back to the appropriate record in Banner

• LU Portal: a portal page that provides several
“widgets” which pull data from a multitude of systems (similar to iGoogle)
• Includes a Blackboard widget to give students quick access to Bb information

• Banner user/course identifiers available to the portal, uses batch_uid to find corresponding Bb data
• Then, query Bb tables directly for announcements / assignments / grades / discussion boards / etc.
• Open database initiative: Bb database schema documentation

• Organizes information by course:

SELECT users.pk1 AS users_pk1, course_main.pk1 AS crsmain_pk1, course_users.pk1 AS course_users_pk1, course_main.course_id, course_main.course_name, course_main.batch_uid course_batch_uid, course_users.role, users.user_id
FROM bb_bb60.users
JOIN bb_bb60.course_users ON course_users.users_pk1 = users.pk1
JOIN bb_bb60.course_main ON course_users.crsmain_pk1 = course_main.pk1
WHERE course_users.row_status = 0
AND course_main.row_status = 0
AND course_main.available_ind = 'Y'
AND users.user_id = lower(?)
AND substr(course_main.batch_uid, 0, 6) = ?
AND course_users.role = ?

• View of one course

• Announcements view

SELECT announcements.crsmain_pk1, course_users.users_pk1, course_users.role, course_main.batch_uid course_batch_uid, announcements.start_date, announcements.end_date, announcements.subject, announcements.announcement
FROM bb_bb60.announcements
JOIN bb_bb60.course_main ON announcements.crsmain_pk1 = course_main.pk1
JOIN bb_bb60.course_users ON course_users.crsmain_pk1 = course_main.pk1
WHERE course_users.row_status = 0
AND course_main.row_status = 0
AND course_main.available_ind = 'Y'
AND announcements.start_date <= sysdate
AND (announcements.end_date is null or announcements.end_date >= sysdate)
AND announcements.crsmain_pk1=?
AND course_users.users_pk1 = ?
AND course_users.role = ?
ORDER BY announcements.start_date desc

• Assignments view

SELECT course_main.pk1 AS crsmain_pk1, gradebook_main.pk1 AS gradebookmain_pk1, course_users.users_pk1, course_users.role, gradebook_main.title, gradebook_main.description, gradebook_main.due_date, gradebook_main.date_modified, gradebook_main.position, course_users.enrollment_date
FROM bb_bb60.gradebook_main
JOIN bb_bb60.course_main ON gradebook_main.crsmain_pk1 = course_main.pk1
JOIN bb_bb60.course_users ON course_users.crsmain_pk1 = course_main.pk1
WHERE course_users.row_status = 0
AND course_main.row_status = 0
AND course_main.available_ind = 'Y'
AND gradebook_main.calculated_ind = 'N'
AND gradebook_main.visible_ind = 'Y'
AND gradebook_main.crsmain_pk1= ?
AND course_users.users_pk1= ?
AND course_users.role = ?
ORDER BY gradebook_main.position

• DB Forum Posts view

SELECT conference_owner.owner_pk1 AS CRSMAIN_PK1, forum_main.pk1 forummain_pk1, forum_main.name AS FORUM_NAME, conference_owner.owner_table,
MAX(LAST_EDIT_DATE) AS LAST_POSTED,
0 AS RECENT_COUNT
FROM bb_bb60.conference_owner, bb_bb60.conference_main, bb_bb60.forum_main, bb_bb60.msg_main
WHERE conference_owner.owner_pk1 = ?
AND conference_owner.owner_table = 'COURSE_MAIN'
AND conference_owner.pk1 = conference_main.conference_owner_pk1
AND forum_main.confmain_pk1 = conference_main.pk1
AND msg_main.forummain_pk1 = forum_main.pk1
GROUP BY conference_owner.owner_pk1, forum_main.pk1, forum_main.name, conference_owner.owner_table

SELECT conference_owner.owner_pk1 AS CRSMAIN_PK1, forum_main.pk1 forummain_pk1, forum_main.name AS FORUM_NAME, conference_owner.owner_table,
MAX(LAST_EDIT_DATE) AS LAST_POSTED,
0 AS RECENT_COUNT
FROM bb_bb60.conference_owner, bb_bb60.conference_main, bb_bb60.groups, bb_bb60.group_users, bb_bb60.forum_main, bb_bb60.msg_main
WHERE groups.crsmain_pk1 = ?
AND groups.pk1 = conference_owner.owner_pk1
AND group_users.groups_pk1=groups.pk1
AND group_users.course_users_pk1 = ?
AND conference_owner.owner_table = 'GROUPS'
AND conference_owner.pk1 = conference_main.conference_owner_pk1
AND forum_main.confmain_pk1 = conference_main.pk1
AND msg_main.forummain_pk1 = forum_main.pk1
GROUP BY conference_owner.owner_pk1, forum_main.pk1, forum_main.name, conference_owner.owner_table

• Grades view

SELECT gradebook_main.pk1, gradebook_main.crsmain_pk1, gradebook_grade.COURSE_USERS_PK1, gradebook_main.title, gradebook_main.description, gradebook_main.due_date, gradebook_main.date_added, gradebook_main.position, gradebook_grade.average_score, gradebook_main.POSSIBLE, gradebook_grade.MANUAL_SCORE, gradebook_grade.MANUAL_GRADE, gradebook_log.ATTEMPT_CREATION AS DATE_MODIFIED //modified 2010-11-16 jmc
FROM bb_bb60.gradebook_grade
JOIN bb_bb60.gradebook_main ON gradebook_grade.gradebook_main_pk1 = gradebook_main.pk1
JOIN bb_bb60.course_users ON course_users.pk1=gradebook_grade.course_users_pk1
JOIN bb_bb60.gradebook_log ON gradebook_log.gradebook_main_pk1 = gradebook_main.pk1
AND gradebook_log.user_pk1=course_users.USERS_PK1
WHERE gradebook_grade.COURSE_USERS_PK1 = ?
AND gradebook_main.crsmain_pk1 = ?
AND gradebook_main.calculated_ind = 'N'
AND gradebook_main.visible_ind = 'Y'
AND gradebook_grade.average_score IS NOT NULL
ORDER BY gradebook_main.position

)
SELECT crsmain_pk1, staffinformation.sirtitle, staffinformation.first_name, staffinformation.last_name, staffinformation.email, staffinformation.phone, staffinformation.office_hours, staffinformation.office_address, staffinformation.biography
FROM bb_bb60.staffinformation
WHERE crsmain_pk1=?
AND ( first_name IS NOT NULL
OR last_name IS NOT NULL
OR email IS NOT NULL
OR phone IS NOT NULL
OR office_hours IS NOT NULL
OR office_address IS NOT NULL

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The title of this session is:
Banner and External Application Integration