It would be great to have a Banner to FlightPath mapping of columns.
Also the mapping of the functional hiereachy of Degree->Program->Area->Group->Course does not seem to be clear.
From what I have understood so far, FlightPath does not utilise the concept of 'Area' and 'Program'. Is that correct ?
Some documentation on that would be helpful too.
All good points.
As for the Banner mapping, it isn't always cut and dry. For example, Banner has a concept of "historical" courses, which the student has previously completed, and current courses, which the student is currently taking. They are stored in a multitude of different tables, and require somewhat inefficient and arcane queries to get to them. So, a simple mapping diagram would be very difficult to construct.
FlightPath 4.x does support the concept of "areas of study", "concentrations", etc. They are referred to as "tracks" or Degree Options. In FlightPath 5.x (nearing alpha release as of the time of this writing), this concept is much more robust, and FlightPath can easily combine degrees, concentrations, minors, etc.
Once FlightPath 5.x is released, I will definitely update the documentation on that.
Thanks!
Hi Richard,
Thank you for answering my questions. I agree that Banner mapping isn't cut and dry at all. We all have our fair share of MAX's in the queries and subqueries.
My focus at this point was more at a conceptual level / terminology in use, in both systems. This, coupled with the 'current' tables mapped would have been a great help.
For e.g. - we are trying to get colleges and subjects to FP from Banner. We have mapped Banner STVSUBJ columns STVSUBJ_CODE to SUBJECT_ID and STVSUBJ_DESC to TITLE in the SUBJECTS table. However given that college_code is also part of the primary key for SUBJECTS in FP, there is always a violation of the primary key when importing data since we have same subject_id for different colleges.
So we went back and looked at the sameple data.sql which is part of the sample data module. Here the example value of 'ACCT' seems to be used variously as the subject code and the major code when looked at across the insert statements in this file.
What am I missing?
I absolutely appreciate FlightPath being made available as an open source and also look forward to the new version. That also has me thinking whether there will be a straight path to migrating data from FP 4.x to 5.x.
Thank you.
Let me describe what the subjects table is all about--
So, there are times in FlightPath when an advisor or student is presented with a long list of courses, and asked to first select the subject, then see the courses within it. Or, just to see all of the courses under a certain subject.
Ex: ACCT = Accounting. So, ACCT 101, ACCT 102, ACCT 210, etc, would all be listed under "Accounting".
Unrelated, yes, you can have a major code of "ACCT", for the BA Accounting degree.
I'll be honest-- I've never heard of subject codes being re-used by more than one college. You can always remove the primary key constraint and test it out.
BTW-- just to throw out a quick plug-- if you need in depth support, I do offer paid support & development via peacocksoftware.com.
Thanks for the detailed explanation about subjects table.
As far as paid support & development is concerned, I have not received any approval from my superior. As of now, budget constraint is the reason given to me. I will gladly hire you if my boss approves budget. How does paid support & development contract work? What is your hourly charge?
No problem, I completely understand. Higher Ed everywhere is suffering from budget cuts it seems.
Please shoot me an email by going here:
https://peacocksoftware.com/contact
I'd prefer to discuss business details over my business email address.
Thanks!
Richard
Hi Richard,
I filled out the online form (https://peacocksoftware.com/contact) as suggested by you. I filled it out earlier tthis week. Have you received my email that I sent it thorugh this form?
I'm sorry about that! I checked my server logs, and it looks like the email was never delivered for some reason. I do see your return address, so I will shoot you an email now with the details.