Student Systems Support Centre

OSS Student Data Feed

About the OSS Student Data Feed

The Oracle Student System (OSS) Student Data Feed has been delivered to improve the provision of student data to local IT systems across the collegiate University. The Feed uses common standards to enable interoperability between any number of different software applications, irrespective of the local development platform or system functions.

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Accessing the OSS Student Data Feed

The OSS Student Data Feed can be accessed via:

  1. the Data Warehouse: (currently on SQL server) is a service provided as part of the Business Intelligence Programme. Colleges and departments wishing to find out more about the Data Warehouse should contact Jane Smewing, email: jane.smewing@admin.ox.ac.uk, tel: (2)86378;
  2. the Web Service;
  3. the 'OSS Agent' that has been developed by Lady Margaret Hall (based on a .Net solution). For more information about the OSS Agent, please contact Tim Vaines, email: tim@live-availability.com or refer to the Overview of Lady Margaret Hall application (41kb).
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1. Accessing the OSS Student Data Feed via the Data Warehouse

To request a username and password to allow access to the Data Feed tables in the Data Warehouse, please email: sdma@admin.ox.ac.uk. The Student Data Management & Analysis team of Student Administration will authorise the IT Services Systems Administration team to send you your Data Warehouse login credentials.

The Data Warehouse is accessed through ODBC-link using the instructions below. The server is BIODBC.uas.ox.ac.uk and the database is an SQL Server Database called STUPROD.

Set up an ODBC connection (Start - Settings - Control Panel - Administrative tools - Data Sources) under the System DSN tab. Click Add and select SQL Server (or SQL Server Native Client 10.0). Add whatever Name and Description you want but the server setting should be BIODBC.uas.ox.ac.uk. On the next screen select 'With SQL Server authentication...' and enter your user name and password. On the next screen make sure that the database field is pointing to STUPROD. Click Finish and Test Data Source.

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2. Accessing the OSS Student Data Feed via the Web Service

An OSS Student Data Feed account is provided on email request by the college, division or departmental Information Custodian to the OSS Support Centre. Please provide the name of the IT Support Officer and the organisation unit(s) that IT Officer supports. A new account will be created specifically for your college or department in order for your IT Officer to access the Feed. Please refer to: Connecting to OSS Data Feed: Notes for IT Officers.

A secure 'web service' has been created which enables local IT systems to access student data. These local systems will need to be configured by IT Support Officers to query the web service, when a 'username' and 'password' has been provided. The Feed now includes both students and accepted applicants, so the query must specify whether students only, applicants only, or both, are required. At least one of the following must also be provided:

  • Department code
  • College code
  • Program code
  • OSS student number

It is possible to provide certain additional parameters to narrow the search above:

  • Program type - in combination with department or college code
  • Student last name - wildcards (%) permitted to replace characters (eg %ston or sm%th%) in combination with department, college or program code
  • Student date of birth - in combination with student last name.
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What data is provided?

There are around 170 separate data items that may be returned for each student, many of which can have multiple values, e.g. if a student has several addresses or is enrolled on several assessment units. Please refer to the documents available from the Student Systems Weblearn space for a list of all the fields returned, and an explanation for what each item means. The OSS Student Data Feed contains details of current and recent students and of accepted applicants. Accepted applicant data is supplied in the same elements and fields as data for current students, but some elements are not supplied for applicants.

Students

Any student who has a course record in OSS which meets the following criteria will be returned:

  • The program is undergraduate, taught postgraduate, research postgraduate, or 'VRO' (visiting, recognised, & other matriculated non-award) course.
  • The student has an enrolled, inactive, or intermitted (suspended) program.
  • The student has a program attempt which was discontinued, completed, or lapsed within the last twelve months.

Accepted applicants

  • Applicants for postgraduate study (both taught and research) are included as soon as they have an offer from the department - this means that they may appear in the feed for several colleges if they do not secure a place at their first choice college.
  • Applicants for undergraduate study are included as soon as they have an offer, even if the offer is conditional.
  • Deferred entrants are included as soon as they have an offer of a place so could remain in the feed as applicants for more than a year.

Students will only appear in the OSS Student Data Feed if they satisfy the selection criteria. Please note that the data is pulled from a parallel snapshot of OSS data, which will be refreshed on a twice daily basis. This has the advantage of improving performance, but staff using the data should be aware that during certain periods, particularly student registration, data changes may be behind by the schedule period of time.

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Support

Contact OSS Support for help with web service account creation, password maintenance, and any technical problems with the web service's or Data Warehouse's functionality and provide the following details:

  • Your OSS Student Data Feed account name
  • The parameters which you used in your query, if applicable
  • The XML error message returned by the service, or a description of the problem you are encountering if you are not receiving messages from the server.
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Student Systems

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