We have a number of systems that collect data and make things generally work – student registration, grading, payroll, room reservations, alumni information, prospect information, and so on. You’ve likely heard some of the systems: Colleague, Advance, Slate, EMS, Moodle, Web Help Desk, and so on. Each of these systems has its own unique set of tools and services both for data entry as well as reporting.
But did you know that we also have a campus data warehouse? Every night a process runs that extracts, transforms, and blends information from all our major campus software systems into a single relational database. From there the data is moved into structures called online analytical processing (OLAP) “cubes” that are accessed by users via software like Tableau and Excel. Together, these cubes and the relational database used to populate them, constitute Carleton’s data warehouse.
OLAP Cubes are so-named because, classically, they were used in private industry to analyze sales figures along three dimensions: Product, time, and location. Cubes may have more than three dimensions, though, and are useful not just for sales data, but for rendering large data sets susceptible to rapid visualization and exploration.
Here are a few examples of existing cubes here at Carleton:
- Finance (budget vs actuals, by fund, source, dept, expense class over time)
- Financial Aid
- Alumni Demographics
- Giving
- Faculty Workloads
- Academic Records (course size trends, grade trends, etc.)
- Position Analysis (open position savings; compa ratios by unit, employee demographics, etc.)
- IT Tickets, Assets (who calls ITS, when, and about what; what equipment was purchased, where is it, and how much it will cost to replace)
These cubes serve to help with planning and strategic decision making.
If you’d like more information on data warehouse reporting, please contact Richard Goerwitz (rgoerwit@carleton.edu).