Historical Data Changes

The Data Warehouse contains data from PeopleSoft and is stored for reporting use by campus data analysts. Most data are refreshed each weekday morning excluding holidays. Some data is refreshed less frequently and includes load dates. This data is often used for historical reporting as a snapshot of the data at a particular point in time.  

Reviews of this historical data from a current perspective may reveal perceived errors such as:  

  1. Name Changes (School, College, Plan, Subplan) 
  1. Spelling Errors 
  1. Data Logic Errors 

These errors will be addressed with the following general guidelines. 

Guideline

Example Result
Changes in the data that reflect a conscious effort to modify a name such as a School, College, Plan or Subplan will not be corrected in previously dated rows.

2006: The Board of Regents approved the renaming of the UWM School of Business Administration to the Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business

2022: The UWM Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business has been renamed to the Sheldon B. Lubar College of Business

The name will not be modified in previous rows to accommodate this name change.
Changes in the data that reflect errors either in logic, spelling or other like issues that would have been changed if found at the load date of the error will be changed in all affected rows. The first character of the UDDS codes associated with UWM is always “B”. Staff found a few instances where UDDS codes appear in StatMaster and EnrlStats records without a “B” in the first     position.  This will be changed to correct the missing data.
Changes to current logic due to changes in business processes will affect data from the point of the business process change. Older data with logic that supported previous business processes will not be updated. Data Analysts will be encouraged to add notation to reports that explain the change in the business process. Should VU_APPSTAT be changed to reflect the ADRV value that was implemented in May 2014? The previous business process was to add a DISC row to the record. No, do not modify the older DISC rows to ADRV. The analyst should add a note to the report addressing this difference.

 Procedures  

  1. All questions concerning data validity in historical rows should be directed to the appropriate Data Custodian.   
  1. If the Data Custodian decides that a change is necessary, the Data Custodian will ask the DGCC to vote on the requested change. 
  1. If the vote is approved, the Data Custodian will complete a JIRA Ticket request for the work to be completed. 
  1. The Data Custodian will be responsible for testing the validity of the new data in the Warehouse view.