Technical Review 08-27-2019 Meeting notes

Date

Attendees

Goals

  • Review Architecture approaches:
    • Self-Contained
    • Self-Contained++
    • All External
    • Data Warehouse/Lake
  • 2.Ed-Fi Dashboards? 
  • 3.Next steps
    • What reporting metrics should a core offering cover?
    • Evaluate Analytics middle tier

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
Architecture Approaches
  • Review Architecture approaches:
    • Self-Contained:
      •  Itzel Torres propose we take this option off the table, since it seems that most implementations are using either a middle view tier or an ETL to a data mart method.
      • This option will make it harder to maintain with every change to ODS 3.x introduced a lot of model updates that resulted in schema changes that would break with previous versions. In the Ed-Fi Dashboard project we had to break with backward compatibility because of these schema changes.
    • Self-Contained++:
      • Need to define how we will evaluate the Analytics Middle tier for this option.
      • Would like to get a quick overview of the Analytics Middle tier from Stephen.
      • Open question is if we aim for generalized views that could be used by most or more prescriptive views that offer pre-calculated values?
    • All External
      • Lot or examples of implementations taking this approach, would they benefit from a core set of standard views? Can we come up with a list of must-haves for the next generation reporting tool?
    • Data Warehouse/Lake
      • Would like to explore a phased approach where we start to build up de-normalized standard views that would support/make it easier to extract data to a data mart.
      • Data mart should be built with the idea of it moving to a data warehouse in the future. It should be designed/modeled as a module in a star schema DW so that it becomes additive and a progression and the work does not have to be re-done.

 Ed-Fi Dashboards?
  •  Initial thoughts
    • Seems overly complex and hard to wrap your head around.
    • Serves a purpose but makes it harder to a broader audience to adopt.
    • Older UI and tech, will need a considerable investment to bring up to date.
  • Options for the future
    • Potential to move to open source, with a governance group supporting it for the next 2-3 years.
    • Middle tier approach would be done with the goal of making Ed-Fi Dashboards ETL readers to consume ODS data better even with updates to the ODS.

Next steps
  • What reporting metrics should a core offering cover?
    • Talked about a core set of standard views that should be shared in the community.
    • Evaluate Analytics middle tier
      • What should an analytics middle tier have? what are the tech specs we should be looking for?
      • When/how do we go about this?
  • Will update cadence of meeting to bi-weekly "sprints"

Action items