Reporting, the easy way

Reporting on your OSP Form Data...
the Easy Way
Will.Trillich@serensoft.com, Sean.Keesler@threeCanoes.com
ePortfolio Wonks
Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Thursday, June 17, 2010

Reporting on your OSP Form Data...
Making
it
Suck
Less
the Easy Way
Will.Trillich@serensoft.com, Sean.Keesler@threeCanoes.com
ePortfolio Wonks
Wednesday, June 16, 2010


Let’s talk about Reporting

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 3


Why Bother With Reporting?
• What’s the big deal?
• Why collect all this data?

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Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 4


Why Bother With Reporting?
• What’s the big deal?
• Why collect all this data?

• We can make decisions based on patterns in the
information

• But if you can’t get information out, then putting
data in is a waste of everyone’s time and eﬀort!

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 5


A Sample Evaluation Form
• Imagine using an Evaluation form as shown here:
• For this to be useful you
must be able to aggregate
all these evaluations...
• per course
• per academic year
• per student
• per evaluator
• etc

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 6


So Create Some Reports Then
• Let’s take a look at what’s going on, rst

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 7


Oh Look...

Sakai Already Has a “Reports” Tool
Of Its Own

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Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 8


Sakai’s Built-In “Reports” Tool
• Why not just use that, then?
• Once it’s set up you can pull lots of useful
patterns from your data

11th
Sakai
Conference
-‐
June
15-‐17,
2010 9


Sakai’s Built-In “Reports” Tool
• Why not just use that, then?
• Once it’s set up you can pull lots of useful
patterns from your data

• “Once it’s set up”!
• Enormous investment, attention, resources to get it
working
• You don’t have to be IU—but it helps :)

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 10


The OSP “Reports” Tool
• Here’s what it looks like after you install it in your
worksite...

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Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 11


So... Now What?
• Can you see how to create a report?
• What will you need to know to get it working?

• Can you hook it up to Crystal Reports
or Cognos tools or Pentaho and get straight to
your Evaluation-form elds? Nope.

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 12


How do you Use it?
• To use the OSP “Reports” tool here’s all you need
to know in order to create a new report...
• XML data structures and operations
• XSL to transform the XML
• XSD to see where the data comes from
• SQL to issue queries to the database
• Be Command-line Savvy, and have backstage
access to the Sakai server
• ...for EVERY NEW REPORT!
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Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 13


That’s a PAINFUL learning curve!

Yikes!

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Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 14


Why Is OSP Reporting So Challenging?
• When you build a new XSD form from scratch it
could have any (ANY!) structure
• The programmers couldn’t predict in advance
what data structures would be needed
• So OSP Collects form data in big, amorphous,
black-box XML chunks as a universal “solution”

• For example:

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 15


One of Sean’s Awesome AAC&U VALUE Rubric Forms

Get
it
from
h+p://www.openEdPrac7ces.org
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 16


Each Row in that Grid Represents a “Field”
• The actual data collected for the ve “axes” in this
form are shown below the grid:

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 17


This is Why the Programmers Opted to Store XML Blobs
• So the Sakai Programmers let us create any form
structure we want
• The result gets stored as an XML blob, such as:
<eval-‐form>

<organiza7on>
3
</organiza7on>

<language>
4
</language>

<delivery>
4
</delivery>

<support>
3
</support>

<message>
4
</message>

<commentary>
Great
improvement...
</commentary>

<ra7ng>
3.6
</ra7ng>
</eval-‐form>
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 18


A Contact Info Form Will Look Completely Different
<contact-‐info>

<name>

<first>Bob</first>

<last>Smith</last> All
these
different
forms

</name> are
too
amorphous
for
the
programmers
to
predict!

<emails>

<work>bob@work.net</work>

<personal>kahuna@mongo.org</work>

</emails>
</contact-‐info>
• Difficult to conjure a database arrangement to
accommodate all these different structures

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 19


Forms can Vary Widely
• Other forms are totally diﬀerent
• Résumé/CV, Contact Info Form, Re ection Form...
• The programmers knew we’d conjure up all kinds
of diﬀerent XSD form structures

• So the programmers chose to just store the XML
• But XML is for transport, not storage...

11th
Sakai
Conference
-‐
June
15-‐17,
2010 20


PROBLEM: How can you Reach the Field-Level Data?
• If you want an average or total of a particular eld
for all students...
• It’s buried inside all this text!
<eval-‐form>

<organiza7on>
3
</organiza7on>

<language>
4
</language>

<delivery>
4
</delivery>

<support>
3
</support>

<message>
4
</message>

<commentary>
Great
improvement...
</commentary>

<average>
3.6
</average>
</eval-‐form>
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 21


You Could use XSL to parse it...
• XSL is designed to transform XML to something
else (often HTML)
• But there’s a STEEP learning curve there
• Requires IT mojo and lots of caﬀeine

• Sure would be nice if we could just use a point-
and-click reporting tool like Crystal Reports or
Cognos or Pentaho...
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 22


Pentaho, Crystal, Cognos and more!

The Report-Enabling Gizmo to the Rescue!

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Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 23


It makes your Form Data Reachable
• It makes everything SQL-selectable!
• Don’t need to learn XML, XSL, XSD, backstage
command-line hooey
• Cognos? Pentaho? Crystal Reports?
No problemo

• We came up with some sample reports
to illustrate:
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 24


A Sample “Cognos Impromptu” Report
• Who’s getting what scores?
• Marie is squeaking by Blaise

• And who’s giving what scores?
• Hmm, let’s see this another way...
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 25


Another Example Cognos Report
• Chip is giving
everyone a
perfect score!
• Time to have
a talk with
him...

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 26


Reports like this Help you Make Decisions and Take Action
• Here we can see one evaluator is likely not taking
his task seriously
• Reporting enables you to see stuﬀ like this and
then take action to nd out more, or to work it
out
• Sure is easy to come up with reports like this if
you can use Cognos or Crystal or Pentaho
• ...which you can’t do when the data is buried
inside XML blobs
11th
Sakai
Conference
-‐
June
15-‐17,
2010 27


Let’s See the OSPTOOL Gizmo in its Element
• Once the tool is installed in your !admin
workspace:
• Open the OSPTOOL there
• Specify which forms to process
• Click “Parse Selected Forms”

• Kick back, be awesome, bask in the accolades

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 28


How to use the “!admin” Interface
• Select which forms
to parse
• Then “Parse” them!

• Let’s follow an
example...

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 29


Create a New Filled-Out Form Instance
• Evaluator responds to a Student Submission:

Evaluator
ﬁlls
out

Evalua7on
form
Normal
workﬂow:
Student’s
cell
is
now
LOCKED

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 30


Now “Parse” the Chosen Forms
• Visit !admin worksite

• Make sure your chosen form is selected for
Parsing
• Then... Parse!

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 31


Now you can just REFRESH your Reports
• Evaluator added new Evaluations for 2 Students!

«
BEFORE
REFRESH
...Then
a
quick
PARSE... AFTER
REFRESH
»
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 32


Magic!

How Does This Work?

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 33


Reporting Tools Require Access to SQL Fields
• If the data is available at the SQL- eld level then
oﬀ-the-shelf reporting tools like Cognos or
Pentaho or Crystal can reveal patterns
• The OSPtool Gizmo makes all the form elds
available directly via SQL
• (You do still need to know SQL, or have access to
someone who does, but now you can forget the XSD
and XSL and command-line voodoo)

11th
Sakai
Conference
-‐
June
15-‐17,
2010 34


Common Patterns in All Form Structures
• Sure, some forms have text elds for email, others
have numeric elds for scores...
<eval-‐form>

<organiza7on>
3
</organiza7on>
<contact-‐info>

<language>
4
</language>

<name>

<delivery>
4
</delivery>


<support>
3
</support>

<last>Smith</last>

<message>
4
</message>

</name>

<commentary>
Great
improvement...
</comme

<emails>

<average>
3.6
</average>

<work>bob@work.net</work> </eval-‐form>

<personal>kahuna@mongo.org</work>

</emails>
</contact-‐info>

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 35



contact-‐info
<contact-‐info>

<name>
name emails


<last>Smith</last>

</name>
ﬁrst last work personal

<emails>

<work>bob@work.net</work>

<personal>kahuna@mongo.org</personal> But
each
ﬁeld
element

</emails> has
a
“parent”
element
</contact-‐info> and
belongs
to
a
form

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 36



• But all eld elements have a position inside the
form data
• All eld elements have a “parent” element
• All eld elements have a root-level “form” element
• Why not leverage that?

11th
Sakai
Conference
-‐
June
15-‐17,
2010 37


That’s Exactly what the OSPtool Gizmo Does
• Each eld knows what its “parent” is
• Easy to determine the “root” form for any eld
• That’s it!

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 38


So here’s the upshot

The Good and the Bad

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 39


The Good Parts
• It’s freely available as Source Code
• https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/serensoft/
• Your report-writers will only need to know SQL
• Any oﬀ-the-shelf SQL reporting package will work
• Pentaho
• Cognos
• Crystal Reports
• etc

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 40


Even Better
• Wouldn’t it be great if your OSP form data were
stored this way by default instead of having to go
through a separate “parsing” process?

• But I digress... :)

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 41


The Bad Parts
• Does it scale?
• Absolutely no idea, please test it!
• Is the !admin interface elegant and clean?
• Um, no
• It’s not “live”
• Updated (and new) forms require re-parsing before
the data is visible in SQL
• Does it auto-run (via Quartz jobs)?
• Not at the moment, “Parse” is manual-only
11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 42


Please Use it and Get to the Patterns in your Data!
• Please install it and try it out
• You won’t need an army of XSL/XML/XSD
engineers, only someone with some SQL skills

• Have fun Unravelling your XML!

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 43


http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/sakai10

https://source.sakaiproject.org/contrib/serensoft/

will.trillich @ serensoft.com

11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
15-‐17,
2010 44


11th
Sakai
Conference
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June
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2010 45


Reporting, the easy way

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