Introduction
The Batch Tracking reports were developed to reduce user effort in mass-producing tracking reports at the end of the semester. Although these reports were developed for
Simmons College, the programs are generic enough to work with any institution. And,
UMassOnline may be interested in the report that shows usage patterns. It is called
STEP 3g: Login Count by Day of Week for One Institution.
Many questions about individual reports can be answered in the User Documentation.
The most likely user issue will be a discrepancy between the batch report and the Vista report. Known discrepancies are listed in the User Documentation. That should be the first place to start if the user identifies an issue with the reports. The important thing to remember is that the reports accurately reflect what is in the tracking tables in the Vista database. We could not precisely duplicate the reports because we were not able to get the SQL calls from Blackboard.
Run Time Issues
Some of the reports can run for an extended period (up to 5 hours or more for half of the data). Run times are noted in the User Documentation. It is suggested that the Dev system be used with data refreshed from the production system at the appropriate point.
It is also OK to run the reports against the production database, but make special arrangements with the DBA to run the longer reports. As of Spring 2009, the reports are developed for both the Vista V4 Dev and V4 Prod systems. For reports that run a long time, contact Frank Lomanno and ask him to suspend the process that kills long-running
Cognos jobs. It runs around 9:00 or 9:30 PM daily. (It's not necessary if jobs won't be running at this time.) You may also need to split some of the jobs into two parts because of run time or file size.
File Type Issues
Most reports can be produced in PDF, HTML, Excel Single Sheet, or CSV format. The one exception is that Cross-tab reports cannot be produced in CSV format. Therefore
Excel 2000 Single Sheet format must be used. Remember that Excel has a ~65,000 line limit, so you may need to break the reports up if they will exceed the line length for Excel.
Running the Reports
You must first run a report that identifies the sections to consider, followed by a report identifying the Demo Students within those sections. Once you have that data, it must be manually inserted in the Cognos reports. (Sorry, an enhancement request for a prompt option has been sent to Cognos.) The detailed instructions follow. All programs can be found in the Cognos directory: Public Folders > UMOL Vista4 Reports >
UMOL Reports System Level > Vista Tracking Reports - run against V4 Dev
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STEP 0: Copy Vista Prod data to Vista Dev if needed.
STEP 1: Obtain a list of the Learning Context IDs for the active courses for the institution and semester. This is an important step because it helps limit the run time for the tracking reports. If you want data from multiple institutions or semesters in one "Step 3" report, then you can concatenate the results together from multiple runs of this report. a.
Run the Cognos report: STEP 1: Select Potentially Active Sections.
Save results as an Excel 2000 Single Sheet file or CSV.
b.
Open the Excel or CSV file. (If you use a CSV file, you can separate the fields by clicking on Data -> Text to Columns .) c.
You may need to change the data type for the Learning Context ID so that you can read the integer (Format-> Cells; change to data type category of "number" with zero decimal places). d.
Make sure the Excel File is sorted by Course Activity Status and
LCID (last two columns). e.
Highlight the LCIDs that are still flagged as "possibly active". Copy and paste them to an empty MS-Word document. f.
Change the table of data to a comma separated string as follows:
- highlight the "table"
- perform the following: Table -> Convert -> Table to Text
- remove any header information
- perform a global change from "^p" to ","
(change paragraph symbol to a comma)
- remove trailing commas g.
Save this data in an MS-Word file.
It will be copied into filters for the reports in Step 3 to limit the
output to just the "possibly active" sections for the specified
institution and semester.
Run time: 2.5 hours for Fall 2008 (897 sections; 597 potentially active)
STEP 2: Identify Demo Students for the specified sections. Tracking activity for these students will be eliminated in reports that filter out demo student activity.
(This is kludgy, but it is done this way to avoid a call to the RPT_Person table in the Step 3 reports. Reports that call the RPT_Person table run for more than 48 hours!) a.
Run the Cognos report: STEP 2: Find Demo Students.
Save results as an Excel 2000 Single Sheet file or CSV. b.
Open the Excel or CSV file. (If you use a CSV file, you should open it directly from Excel and separate fields by clicking on Data -> Text to Columns . Make sure the Wizard uses "Delimited" file type.) c.
You may need to change the data type for the Person ID so that you can read the integer (Format-> Cells; change to data type category of
"number" with zero decimal places). The Person ID is called "ID" and
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is found in the last column of the report. d.
Highlight the Person ID column (last column). Copy and paste it into an empty MS-Word document. e.
Change the table of data to a comma separated string as follows:
- highlight the "table"
- perform the following: Table -> Convert -> Table to Text
- remove any header information
- perform a global change from "^p" to ","
(change paragraph symbol to a comma)
- remove trailing commas f.
Save this data in an MS-Word file. It will be copied into filters for the reports in Step 3 to limit the output to non-demo students for the specified institution and semester.
Run time: 3 minutes for Fall 2008 (597 potentially active sections)
STEP 3: Open up each "Step 3" report in Report Studio. Reports can be found in the following Cognos folder:
Public Folders > UMOL Vista4 Reports > UMOL Reports System
Level>Vista Tracking Reports - run against V4 Dev
Find the Filter that selects the sections:
[ lmdev00].[RPT_TRACKING].[LEARNING_CONTEXT_ID] in (604364127071,604364167071…)
Put the data saved in STEP 1 into that filter between the parentheses.
Find the Filter that selects out the Demo Students:
[lmdev00].[RPT_TRACKING].[PERSON_ID] not in (604364145071,604364185071….)
Put the data saved in STEP 2 into that filter between the parentheses.
Do not get the lists mixed up! ;-)
Run the reports single stream. I think the performance will be better as some of the Oracle work doesn't have to be redone from report to report. (If truly pressed for time, you can run Steps 3a-3f single stream at the same time you are running Steps 3g-3h single stream.)
Cognos will prompt for the file type, etc. I suggest using "Advanced
Options". Select the options to Save the report and send it by email . Once you check these options, then you can check multiple file formats on the left side. This means the report only has to be run once to produce multiple file types. You can also queue up reports to run later, which is handy to stagger them overnight. Just leave enough time between them so they aren't running at the same time.
You will be prompted for various data – usually the Start and End dates/times and sometimes the Rank Cutoff. One report requires you to enter a Learning
Context ID number for the institution. That number can be found in a list at the end of the report.
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Programming Tips
There is no question that this approach is a programming kludge and a scheduling headache. Rather than design for ease of programming, it was designed to minimize run time and I/O by accessing as few tables as possible in each query. The first two steps provide the list of sections to use and the demo students to eliminate. This information is hardcoded in the filter of each report. Without this hardcoded information, each report would run for over 24 hours – if it ever finished.
Before making any modifications, or even poking around, please make a copy of the report(s) in your "My Folders" area.
If you need to modify the report for any reason, note that most reports use "Tabular
Models". Make sure you understand Tabular Models before making any modifications.
The File Usage report uses a package that has embedded SQL. Refer to the Entity
Relationship Model for the SQL.
There are several areas that were not fully dealt with. These may be areas to look at for future enhancements.
1.
The File Usage report more closely matched the Vista report by including
Auditors as well as Students. Other reports may benefit also from including auditors.
2.
All reports summarize by LCID. Apparently actions taken when in a group are attributed to the Group's Learning Context ID rather than the Section's LCID. So group statistics may (or may not) account for some of the discrepancies. A quick fix would be to provide group actions on separate report pages and let Simmons add them together to get the total. A nicer, but more costly option would be to combine them with the section statistics, though anything done like this in Cognos is cumbersome.
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Institution Name
Learning Context ID
Bunker Hill Community College
Emmanuel College
Massachusetts College of Art and Design
7214274
5083347
38397566
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Quinsigamond Community College
Salem State College
Simmons College
UMass Amherst
UMass Boston
UMass Dartmouth
UMass Lowell
UMass Worcester
UMassOnline
UMOL Sample
UMOL Testing
1777396
38397510
2099140
2228634
35155870
26190
26226
26298
26262
26334
27970
706303282011
998628362161
UMOL Training
Wentworth Institute of Technology
Westfield State College
Westfield State College TEMP
2154814
3183489
35589104
884709970271
Wheelock College 43243898
If the institution has been created since December 2008, it is likely not on this list. You can create a new list using TOAD or Cognos. The SQL code is:
select * from learning_context where type_code = 'Institution'
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