Institutional Research – Proposed New Data Files DRAFT July 9, 2004

Content and Format

In order to understand the reasons for, status and scope of the project to improve SUNY’s Institutional Research Systems, please see the presentation “Data Driven Decision Making”.

This set of files represents the proposed content and format of the new Student, Course and Term/Section files. The following files are included:

Data Elements – General Information.pdf

This PDF file is a listing of currently reported and new data elements proposed to be reported in the new Student, Course and Section file submissions. This file will tell you what data elements are unchanged from the existing SDF and CASA file submissions, which have been modified in format or definition, which have a coding change, and which are new.

New File Elements and Codes

There are three PDF files corresponding to the proposed Student, Course and Section files submissions:

New Student File Elements and Codes.pdf

New Course File Elements and Codes.pdf

New TermSection File Elements and Codes.pdf

In the future systems, course information and term-specific section information will be reported separately.

Campus Submission Files

There are three JPG files of a more technical nature that graphically depict the proposed submission format for the new Student, Course and Term/Section data files.

Campus Submission Files – Course.jpg

Campus Submission Files – TermSection.jpg

Campus Submission Files - Student

Your technical support staff will be supplied with complete specifications once they are finalized. For their information, we expect the following to be typical of all data file exchanges in the new centralized administrative systems:

• All administrative systems will use XML as the standard input format.
• Campuses who wish to submit files in XML format will be supplied with the necessary schema information.
• Campuses who do not wish to submit files in XML format will submit text files in standard formats. These files will be converted to XML format and validated before they will be accepted for processing.
• Output from centralized administrative systems will be supplied in either standard text format or XML at campus option.

Questions should be directed to Barbaraann Owad, (518) 443-5732, owadb@sysadm.suny.edu.