Sakai External Database
The Sakai External Database acts as the central source of most, if not all, data external to Sakai. This data is collected from various campus systems, primarily in the form of database tables and queries. The collected data is then transformed into a single source of data presented in a format amenable to the Sakai provider mechanisms.
Requirements
- Data Sourcing: Data being provided to the External Database can come from a number of different campus systems. The database must be able to handle loading data from linked databases, extract procedures, and other systems. In some cases, the external database will locally store and manage data sources.
- Data Refresh: Each source of external data will carry with it a refresh requirement. These refresh requirements may include near-realtime, timed, or ad-hoc scenarios. The external database must be able to fulfil the refresh requirements for each data source.
- System Response: Given that the repository generally aggregates data from external sources, the speed by which aggregated data is provided to Sakai must be optimized.
- Data Synthesis: In some cases, multiple data sources may contain similar versions of source data. Care must be taken when synthesizing this data for presentation to Sakai.
- Data Availability: Sakai will be a core campus system, and therefore should exhibit maximum availability of data. This availablity requirement extends to the data dependence on source systems. If the source system does not provide a sufficient degree of availability, measures must be taken to ensure the data is avaiable when the source system is offline.
Achitectural Design
The External Database will be hosted on a single database server. This database will, at one end, allow data to be fed into it from various source systems on campus, and at the other end will provide a database schema readable by Sakai, and formatted to be as efficient as possible in the Sakai structure.
Data will be processed and provided to Sakai via three layers:
- Data Collection: The data to be used in the external database will be collected from the various source systems. Data can be collected in the form of:
- Oracle Materialized Views
- Direct Database-Linked Views
- Procedural Feeds into Local Tables
- Locally Managed Tables
- Data Integration: The collected data is coalesced into homogenous data views. These views are resposible for converting data to ensure that type and key values are consistent.
- Data Conversion: The collected data views are then converted to present data in a manner consistent with the required Sakai interfaces.
Data Sources
The enterprise database will collect and aggregate data from:
- BANNER
- CAF / Degree Navigator
- Vetrinary Medicine Systems
- School of Medicine Systems
- Roles Repository