Reporting on your XML Field Data
Will Trillich <[email protected]>Sean Keesler <[email protected]>
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The Agenda
• A discussion of the problem• A demonstration of our approach• Starting the dialogue
July 2009 210th Sakai Conference - Boston, MA, U.S.A.
The ProblemSo We Begin By Discussing
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Reporting
• “Pulling patterns out of your data”• How many A’s, B’c, C’s?• Who’s our top student?• What’s the average eval score?
• Without reporting, why even have the data?• Reporting requires that you can get to the data• In OSP, form data is buried in XML• Reporting tools need SQL field-level access
Form Data Entry
quick-evaluation
form
content-grade (0-4)
style-grade (0-4)
Form Data Stored as XML
• After the data is entered it’s stored as a monolithic chunk of XML
• How do we report on content-grade?
<structuredData> <quick-evaluation> <content-comment>Nice work</content-comment> <content-grade>4</content-grade> <style-comment>A bit less passive voice should have been used</style-comment> <style-grade>3</style-grade> </quick-evaluation></structuredData>
Data Access at the SQL levelReporting Tools need
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Reporting Tools
• Crystal Reports• Cognos Impromptu, Series 8• Pentaho• BIRT• Etc…
They all use SQL-selects to pull data;monolithic XML chunks are opaque unless you tack on XSL to navigate the tree
Parsing Data Via XSL
• You can use XSL to navigate your XML data• But it’s painful/costly to set up• And it’s slow
• (Yuck!)
Wouldn’t it be nice if…
• Imagine pulling a report like this on OSP data using an off-the-shelf reporting tool
Reporting GizmoIntroducing Serensoft’s
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Built with help and guidance from ThreeCanoes and Agilearn
The Sizzle
• Here’s a Cognos Impromptu report:
More Sizzle
• Another Cognos report
Even More Sizzle
• We’ll show you live reports from live form data, changing before your very eyes (if the network cooperates)
Admin Interface Needs Attention
• This is the first iteration, don’t forget
Caveats
• It’s brand-new so there are lots of decisions yet to be made (this is where we’re asking for your feedback)• Security• SQL Schema• etc
• It’s an “admin” tool only• It just parses the XML and puts the data where
you can “SELECT” it
Begin The DialogueNot it’s time to
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What Issues Are Important To You?
• Now we open the floor to start the dialog• We’ll continue this on-list (sakai-dev) in
the future• Your feedback will help us shape this
gizmo to provide the functionality you require
• Let’s start talking!