Tell us about your data sources. Are you pecking in one student at a time, or are you importing data? What have you found to be the best way to aggregate data, and how could the process become more automated?http://elumen.element-u.com/forum/list.php?7Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:57:59 -0700 Phorum 5.2.6a http://elumen.element-u.com/forum/read.php?7,78,78#msg-78 http://elumen.element-u.com/forum/read.php?7,78,78#msg-78this is huge. Karen Geary of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) has sent me the SQL code which they use to generate the necessary data to import into eLumen. The way I understand it (BANNER experts could explain this better), they:

1. Use the attached SQL queries to generate views against BANNER.
2. The views are then exported to XML document fragments.
(NOTE: if eLumen Collaborative handles your imports, you're done. Send them the XML and you can skip the rest)
3. The XML fragments are combined and validated against the eLumen XSD (contact Sebastian or your support person for the latest)
4. The final XML document is imported into eLumen, probably using their latest (and greatest!) web-based import utility.

Please post your thanks to Karen for sharing these files. Everyone needs them if they have the ability to execute SQL against BANNER. I unfortunately, do not have that luxury [yet], so I use a different method.

THANKS, KAREN!]]> jrevillini Import/ExportTue, 25 Mar 2008 21:52:39 -0700 http://elumen.element-u.com/forum/read.php?7,8,8#msg-8 http://elumen.element-u.com/forum/read.php?7,8,8#msg-8
Blue fin tech. has been kind enough to let us install eLumen on my development box (self-supported, of course), and I'm using SQL Server 2005 Express (the free one) for the database. Tomcat, of course, was free. I have written a how-to guide on setting up a development box from scratch, but I haven't gotten the new wiki up yet. I should have that done in a week or two.

So last night I set about importing Spring 2008 enrollment data on the dev box. The old import process (the one where you hit a URL like http:// servername:8080/elumen/jsp/processImportsOnce.jsp) wasn't doing anything. I called Sebastian, and he walked me through setting up the new import process which sounded really great (it has some new conflict resolution features which help keep the data sanitized). However, as we were going through it, things were going wrong. The SQL code I needed to run against the database failed at first, and I had to do some manual entries, then the import process failed...

... long story short: all the problems turned out to be because of the method I had used to create a copy of my production database on the development server. I had deleted the 'elumen' database on the development server, then ran an Export Data task from the production server to the development box. WRONG! Doing this copies the tables and data BUT DOES NOT set the primary key columns to IDENTITY, which means you cannot insert new data the way you normally would.

Sebastian recommended a different method of duplicating the database:
1) go to the production box and open sql manager
2) backup the 'elumen' db
3) copy the *.bak file from the backup directory on the live box to the backup directory on the development box
4) delete the elumen database (you may need to DETACH the database first, as SQL Server is too stupid to drop any connections to the DB before deleting it)
5) restore the database on the dev box, using the *.bak file you copied over
6) delete and recreate the 'elumen' user, and assign db_owner privileges.
7) restart tomcat
8) login to elumen and make sure everything works. if you get the 'database temporarily not available' error, just wait about a minute and try again. If it is still not connectable, there is still something wrong with the database on the development box. Make sure it is online, make sure the SQL Server services are running, double check the permissions for the elumen user.

After I did this, I was able to upgrade my development box to use the new eLumen import tool, and everything was totally awesome. Thanks again to Sebastian, who worked tirelessly to make sure I got everything going, and did not get mad that the whole thing was bombing because I had mirrored the database the wrong way. Muchos kudos.]]> jrevillini Import/ExportFri, 08 Feb 2008 06:56:02 -0800