STUDENT column definitions . Pennant Student Records Home . Data Warehouse Home

STUDENT table

(dwngss_ps.student)

Explanation

Biographical, demographic and other data about people at Penn who are students. One records exists for each student in Pennant (Banner source database), including all students who were enrolled at or on leave from the University Spring 1990 and later.

The table is one of the few which has the student name, not just the identifying number. This is the current name used in Pennant Records; there are other names available with different "name types" -- see the ST_NAME_OTHER. There are also other identifying elements, used in other systems -- see ST_ADDL_ID.

Source

The warehouse STUDENT table is refreshed in batch mode from the Operational Data Store (ODS), which gets its data from the Banner database. The UPENN_ODS source tables are SATURN_SPRIDEN and SATURN_SPBPERS. In the online Pennant system, the data in the STUDENT table can be viewed on the SPAIDEN form.

Common Uses

• Getting names for students identified elsewhere by PennID.
• Identifying populations of students based on specific bio/demo factors.

Cautions and notes

• PennID uniquely identifies a person in Pennant Student Records, and can be used to join tables. In Banner, the Penn_ID is stored in the SPRIDEN_ID, and along with the name can be used to search for a person in the online system. However, the actualy key in Banner isStudent PIDM, a system-assigned unique ID in the source database, so that is preserved in the Data Warehouse as the actual record key. On rare occasions when a Penn_ID has to change (typically done in Penn Community to correct a problem), the old-to-new Penn_id can be found in the warehouse DWADMIN.CHANGED_PENN_ID table.
• The SPRIDEN_ID in Banner can be 9 characters in length. Students will always have a valid 8-character Penn_ID in the SPRIDEN_ID field, but non-students, such as third-party entities that are paying tuition, can have a SPRIDEN_ID that is not a valid Penn_ID and for such entities the SPRIDEN_ID can have up to 9 alpha-numeric characters. You generally will not see these in the Pennant Student Records data collection, but they can show up in Pennant Accounts.
• The student's Legal Name is stored in the name fields of the ST_NAME_OTHER table. The Name in the STUDENT table contains the student's preferred first name, whenever one has been provided by the student. The Name in STUDENT is the one that should be used for most reporting at Penn.
• Email address was formerly stored with the person record in the legacy warehouse tables because we had only one address per person in the old SRS source. Now that students can have more than one email address, each identified by an "email type," the email addresses are stored in a separate table. See ST_EMAIL.
• The citizenship indicator in the STUDENT table contains a value that will tell you whether the individual is a US Citizen, a Permanant Resident of the US, or a non-citizen. For students who are no US Citizens, their country of citizenship is stored in the ST_CITZ_LANG table.
• All student biographic and demographic information for people who were students since 1990 were converted from SRS to Banner. However, not all academic information was converted. The academic information for anyone who was active at Penn in the Fall of 2010 or later was converted; older records remain in the legacy Data Warehouse tables.

STUDENT column definitions . Pennant Student Records Home . Data Warehouse Home