Discussion of Scope

Summary

• OFIS was designed with one faculty's data needs in mind.
• There is data in CS reports that is not currently captured in OFIS.
• The proposed CS extensions to OFIS will endeavor to be as general-purpose for additional faculties as possible within constraints (time, availability of information).
  • The more widely applicable these extensions can be, the easier it will be to avoid adding additional developers for each faculty
    • (which was a hope expressed by Peter Douglas in March)
  • The extensions may involve a need for different schemas than those currently in the database.
  • For testing purposes, where necessary CS could define new schemas (again, general-purpose) which, when they have been fully tested, could involve porting data from the existing specific-purpose equivalents.

Proposed CS-OFIS Action Plan

Planning

• Examine current CS reports to determine what data is required to automate their preparation
• Examine non-CS reports to determine what generic data may be required later

Inquiry

• Determine which on-campus databases contain desired information (ask current OFIS team, CS faculty)
• Determine which information is already in the current OFIS implementation and its usability state for CS

Analysis

• Obtain access to on-campus databases and assess state of data (is it usable? parseable? etc)
• Investigate current OFIS authentication practices
• Investigate need for faculty/graduate-student separation

Preparation

• Work with on-campus database administration to mend any data corruption/unusability in CS data (i.e. contradictory information, multiple employee numbers, nexus IDs)

Implementation

• Create database structure suitable for the most general case usage (i.e. separate fields such as 'name' into 'last name', 'given name'), with minimum duplication of data (if possible, access campus databases directly)
• Create database user-interface for faculty use (inspection) working within the OFIS framework, extending where necessary
• Create report templates for CS reports (allow time period for other departments to prepare their templates, since data is likely to be at least partially faculty-wide)
• Implement data-retrieval and report-creation logic