•    The warehouse design is based on Ralf Kimball’s data model
  • The Kimball model includes both dimensions and facts
  • The model revolves around numbers (facts)
  • The dimensions describe the facts
  • A dimensional model is optimized for reporting (queries)
• The warehouse is a “snapshot in time” of Banner data and other non-Banner data sources
  • example:  4th week data
• Cognos is the reporting tool that is used to pull the data from the warehouse
  • Converted as PDF and printed
  • Saved as Excel file
  • e-mailed to your inbox

• Facts (also referred to as cubes):
  • contains the data corresponding to a particular business process, action or event; typically numeric (links two or more dimensions together)
  • example of a fact: registration(credit hours, grades, quality points)

• Dimensions:
  • contains details about each instance of an fact  (descriptors)
  • examples of dimensions: academic year, academic period, entity(last name, first name), section(course title, course number, crn, section term code)

• The Data Warehouse was placed into production on June 2, 2014.
• The warehouse includes 108,702,145 rows of data from Banner Finance, Student and Human Resources and Financial Aid
• Reporting includes pre-built and ad-hoc queries.
  • Pre built reports will include parameters that you will respond to at run time
  • Ad-hoc queries will give you the ability to have full control of the report
• The data is refreshed on a nightly basis.
• # of Dimensions ………………………….72
• # of Cubes ………………………………….56
• # of data elements (columns) …..2,666

Demonstration:

• Ad-hoc reporting — credit hours
• Grade crosstab rollup

For access to the data warehouse, contact Faye Whitenack at whitenaf@wou.edu.

For Cognos Warehouse training, contact Max Chartier at chartierm@wou.edu