Technology-Centric Focus

A data warehouse (DW) is a database intended for reporting and analysis; it is used by an increasing number of higher education institutions to provide reports not easily generated in the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system (e.g., PeopleSoft, Banner, Datatel, etc.)

“Reporting. The ERP products often cannot generate the reports the institutions need. Many institutions have created data warehouses to solve their reporting and data query needs."

"… none of the vendors specifically pointed to functionality as a key to their customers’ purchasing decision. In fact, several vendors openly disagreed about functionality’s being a key factor in the ultimate choice of a system."

The Promise and Performance of Enterprise Systems for Higher Education - 2002, EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research

For operational staff and faculty, retrieving data from the DW can be equally, if not more, daunting than retrieving data from the ERP. The reason is simply that the DW focuses on aggregate student data, whereas the need of faculty and operational staff is tracking individual students.

Below are five (5) screen prints from a cross-section of data warehouses from the Web sites of several higher education institutions. DWs are generally technology-centric. Technology-centric are those DWs which focus on 1) the design/attributes of the DW, rather than the functionality/user interface and 2) require users to become technology-proficient in understanding table structures, table joins, and querying/programming.

Slide One (Focus of Data Archectiture, Not User Interface)

Slide Two: Users Must Understand/Join Tables

Slide Three: Requires Query, Table Joins and Other Skills

Slide Four: Requires Programming and Other Skills

Slide Five: Must Understand Operational Schemas

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