PennERA Proposals Collection Snapshot Dates

·Back to the documentation on PennERA Proposals Collection Snapshots 

The PennERA Proposals snapshot is taken annually, and is identified by the snapshot fiscal year--the latest closed fiscal year as of the date when the snapshot job was run. (The University's fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30. For example, fiscal year 2005 ended on June 30, 2005.) The snapshot fiscal year is stored in SNAPSHOT_FY in the snapshots of the PennERA Proposals tables, and in SPFY_SNAP_FY in the snapshots of the reference tables for the BALANCES table (in the General Ledger data collection).

The snapshot is not automatically scheduled, but is run upon Data Administration's request--usually in January. For example, in January, 2007, the data for snapshot fiscal year 2006 was loaded in the Warehouse. (By January, 2007, for most of the proposals submitted during fiscal year 2006, the sponsors had let the University know whether they had awarded funding or not.)

Two batch jobs are used to take the snapshot. One job takes the snapshot of the reference tables for the BALANCES table. The other job takes the snapshot of the PennERA Proposals tables. In each record of a snapshot table, the snapshot date indicates when the snapshot of the record was taken. (The snapshot date is stored in SNAPSHOT_DATE in the snapshots of the PennERA Proposals tables, and in SPFY_SNAP_DATE in the snapshots of the reference tables for the BALANCES table.) Because the two snapshot jobs are often run on different days, and each of the jobs can take some time to run, the value for the snapshot date can differ from record to record for a given snapshot. The snapshot date for a given snapshot is the latest (max) snapshot date for all of the records for the snapshot fiscal year in all of the tables that are included in the snapshot.

The following table provides the snapshot date for each PennERA Proposals snapshot that has been taken since PennERA was implemented (October 14, 2003).

* Note: Use caution when comparing success rates for other snapshot fiscal years with the rates for this snapshot fiscal year. This snapshot seems to have a greater success rate than usual because the sponsors had more time to notify the University about awards before the snapshot was taken. For example, for proposals submitted in June, 2008, the sponsors had almost 12 months to notify the University about awards before the snapshot was taken; for proposals submitted in June in most other years, they had about 6 months.