Reporting on your XML Field Data

Will Trillich <will.trillich@serensoft.com>Sean Keesler <sean.keesler@threecanoes.com>

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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!