PennERA Proposals Collection Refresh Schedule

The PennERA Proposals data collection tables that store current data are refreshed nightly in the Data Warehouse, Monday through Friday, following the completion of PT4010J, the job that feeds BEN Financials data to PennERA. The "nightly" jobs that refresh the PennERA Proposals tables actually run in the early morning, Tuesday through Saturday, and are usually finished by the start of business. These jobs completely replace the contents of the PennERA Proposals tables that store current data. Note that the tables storing current data are not available for querying while the nightly jobs are in progress. To see whether the jobs are in progress, check the Research Data section of the Data Warehouse Update/Load Status page.

To support longitudinal studies, a snapshot of the tables in the PennERA Proposals data collection is taken annually. The snapshot also includes many of the reference tables for the Balances table (in the General Ledger data collection). A snapshot is identified by the snapshot fiscal year, which is the latest closed fiscal year as of the date when the snapshot job was run. The snapshot job does not change the data for earlier snapshots; it simply adds the data for the new snapshot. It refreshes the "snapshot" version of a given table by appending a complete copy of the "current data" version of the table. The snapshot job is not automatically scheduled, but is run upon Data Administration's request--usually in December or January. The snapshot tables are not available for querying while the snapshot job is in progress.

Source of the Data
The PennERA Proposals current data in the Data Warehouse (accessible via the Business Objects PennERA Proposals Universe) comes from the Proposal Tracking module of PennERA, the University’s electronic research administration system (in use since October 14, 2003). The Office of Research Services uses Proposal Tracking to track pre- and post-award information on sponsored projects (such as grants and contracts).

The PennERA Proposals snapshot data in the Data Warehouse (accessible via the Business Objects PennERA Proposals Snapshots Universe) comes from the tables in the Data Warehouse that store current data for the PennERA Proposals and General Ledger data collections.

Time Span Covered
The data accessible via the Business Objects PennERA Proposals Universe includes records for currently active sponsored projects, as well as historical data going as far back as approximately 1982. (Much of the historical data was converted from the legacy system (RSS). Historical data from before 1982 is spotty.) However, the data on administrative activities (stored in the PENNERA_PROPOSAL_ACTIVITY table) does not go back that far. Data is available only for activities whose effective date is Jan. 22, 2008 or later.

The data accessible via the Business Objects PennERA Proposals Snapshots Universe includes data for snapshot fiscal year 2004 and thereafter. A snapshot is a static copy of all of the records that were in the source tables when the snapshot job was run. A snapshot is identified by the snapshot fiscal year, which is 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, in December, 2005, the data for snapshot fiscal year 2005 was loaded in the Warehouse. (By December, 2005, for most of the proposals submitted during fiscal year 2005, the sponsors had let the University know whether they had awarded funding or not.)