8 Questions on Graduate Project And Seminar - Project | MIS 583 | Study Guides, Projects, Research Introduction to Business Management

Project Topic Proposal Form

1. What is the tentative title of your project?

Development of a Student Data Warehouse for the Illinois Board of Higher

Education

2. Statement of the problem(s)/issue(s) you will address.

At present, there are three database or file systems that store Illinois

undergraduate student data. This data is used to answer IBHE research and policy

questions; however, it is very cumbersome to work with these three systems. The

three existing systems run on three mainframes in three different physical

locations with diverse hardware and software. There are several duplicated data

elements within these systems and the colleges and universities must submit

redundant data several times throughout the year. The flat file structure of these

three systems do not support ad hoc queries and generating even standard reports

is very time-intensive. Also, no single system contains all the data elements

required to address a wide range of policy questions. A proposed solution to these

problems is the development and design of a data warehouse. In addition, IBHE

would like to make the information from this data warehouse to be web-accessible

while protecting the privacy of the students and complying to data agreements

with the participating organizations. There are other problems with the existing

systems, but these are the main problems that IBHE would like to address.

My project will specifically involve the logical design of the overall data

warehouse and physical development of the enrollment and graduation portions of

this data warehouse. The main problems I will address include:

a. Establishing the needs and requirements of the agency and end users.

b. Designing the data warehouse to address the needs and requirements while

providing flexibility for future needs and requirements.

c. Implementing the design on SQL Server.

d. Migrating the data from two flat files stored in a mainframe IBM MVS

operating environment to the data warehouse running on Microsoft SQL

Server and Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0.

e. Cleansing and transforming the data to conform to the data warehouse

specifications and check data quality and integrity.

f. Optimizing the response times of queries against the data warehouse.

g. Designing and/or implementing query, analysis and reporting tools. This

depends on IBHE’s requirements and budget. If there are no products that

do not meet IBHE’s requirements or budget limitations, I will need to

develop these tools.

h. Creating security and maintenance procedures.

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Project Topic Proposal Form

1. What is the tentative title of your project? Development of a Student Data Warehouse for the Illinois Board of Higher Education 2. Statement of the problem(s)/issue(s) you will address. At present, there are three database or file systems that store Illinois undergraduate student data. This data is used to answer IBHE research and policy questions; however, it is very cumbersome to work with these three systems. The three existing systems run on three mainframes in three different physical locations with diverse hardware and software. There are several duplicated data elements within these systems and the colleges and universities must submit redundant data several times throughout the year. The flat file structure of these three systems do not support ad hoc queries and generating even standard reports is very time-intensive. Also, no single system contains all the data elements required to address a wide range of policy questions. A proposed solution to these problems is the development and design of a data warehouse. In addition, IBHE would like to make the information from this data warehouse to be web-accessible while protecting the privacy of the students and complying to data agreements with the participating organizations. There are other problems with the existing systems, but these are the main problems that IBHE would like to address. My project will specifically involve the logical design of the overall data warehouse and physical development of the enrollment and graduation portions of this data warehouse. The main problems I will address include: a. Establishing the needs and requirements of the agency and end users. b. Designing the data warehouse to address the needs and requirements while providing flexibility for future needs and requirements. c. Implementing the design on SQL Server. d. Migrating the data from two flat files stored in a mainframe IBM MVS operating environment to the data warehouse running on Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0. e. Cleansing and transforming the data to conform to the data warehouse specifications and check data quality and integrity. f. Optimizing the response times of queries against the data warehouse. g. Designing and/or implementing query, analysis and reporting tools. This depends on IBHE’s requirements and budget. If there are no products that do not meet IBHE’s requirements or budget limitations, I will need to develop these tools. h. Creating security and maintenance procedures.

i. Drafting procedures for data edits, data updates, additions/changes to the data warehouse design and data gathering.

3. Based on your literature review of the topic and related areas, describe the content, in general and the quality of the relevant literature. I have already done some web research on data warehousing and have found many useful, practical articles especially in www.dmreview.com. I have also read Building the Data Warehouse by the “father of data warehousing”, W.H. Inmon. This book is an excellent starting point and tells the reader why a data warehouse may or may not be necessary and how to design a data warehouse if it is indeed necessary. Another highly recommended and very popular book is Ralph Kimball’s The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit. Kimball is primarily responsible for the use of dimensional modeling, or star schemas, in many of today’s functional data warehouses. This is a step-by-step book that offers the theory behind each step or decision in developing a data warehouse. Through my web research, I have found that there are hotly contested debates between the schools of Inmon and Kimball when it comes to data warehouse design. Both sides seem to have very good points and it appears that many data warehouse designers take a little from both. Communications of the ACM has several excellent articles on the data warehousing. The September 1998 issue offered a special section on industrial- strength data warehousing that include such articles as “Warehousing on the Web” and “Project-based warehouses.” Other articles I have read or planning to review include: Ballou, Donald P. and Giri Kumar Tayi. “Enhancing Data Quality in Data Warehouse Environments.” Communications of the ACM 42 (Jan 1999): 73. Srivastava, Jaideep and Ping-Yao Chen. “Warehouse Creation – A Potential Roadblock to Data Warehousing.” IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering 11 (Jan-Feb 1999): 118-126. Subramanian, Ashok, Douglas L. Smith and Anthony C. Nelson. “Strategic Planning for Data Warehousing.” Information Management 33 (Dec. 5, 1997): 99-113. My plan for the literature review section of my project is to find articles related to each of the common problems in building a data warehouse. 4. What software do you plan to use?

6. Is this project related to your work? If so, please describe. I was hired by the IBHE to work specifically on this project. I will most likely be the sole person responsible for and working on the entire life cycle of the project (beyond the Master’s project portion) under the supervision of Neil Matkin. 7. Is this topic similar to other projects/theses conducted in the MIS program? If so, please describe similarities and differences. Give specific title(s) of project(s) and student’s name(s). a. Doddanavar, Amy G. “Analysis and Design of a Managerial Decision Support System for the Illinois Department of Corrections Juvenile Division.” 1994. i. The focus of this project was the model base used for the DSS and not so much on the database although data flow diagrams and entity models were included for the project. ii. My proposed project will not really involve the creation of models. Data from the IBHE Student Data Warehouse will most likely be queried and exported to MS Excel or SPSS for analysis or displayed on a Web browser for reports. b. Durbin, Michael P. “Designing and Building a Data Warehouse Graphical Front-End.” 1995. i. As the title says, this project only involved the user interface. The goal of this project was to create a front-end to an existing Oracle data warehouse using purchased software, Open Clinical Foundation (OCF) and PowerChart. ii. My proposed project is more extensive since I propose to design and develop the data warehouse as well as programming the web- based front end. c. Escarraz, Paul. “Design of an Organization Specific Object-Oriented Product Development Methodology for the Illinois Department of Insurance.” 1999. i. This project really does not have any similarities to my proposed project. I only include it here because I was very impressed by how well this project was executed and documented. I plan to pattern the organization of my own project on this excellent example. 8. What will be the end product(s) of the project?

Although my Master’s project will cover the analysis and design of the entire data warehouse, the scope of the physical project will be limited to implementing the data warehouse schema but only loading the data (approximately 12 million records) from the largest of the three legacy systems and designing the web-accessible front end. There are some questions regarding the validity of the existing data, so a good portion of the project development time will be spent on the data cleansing. This will be the first prototype of the IBHE Student Data Warehouse. Documents that will be included in my project are as follows:  Requirement analysis report  Evaluation of alternative solutions  Cost-benefit analysis  Logical and physical design of the data warehouse  Implementation plan  Maintenance plan  Sample code for both the back end and the front end  Sample outputs/results  Future enhancements

8 Questions on Graduate Project And Seminar - Project | MIS 583, Study Guides, Projects, Research of Introduction to Business Management

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Project Topic Proposal Form