Populating the Data Warehouse

Data is imported into the Data Warehouse from source systems on a monthly basis for most systems and daily for publications. As well as copying data from the central systems, the Data Warehouse import routines perform a transformation of the data. The transformation process essentially simplifies the data and, in some cases, it also converts the data into the format required for the RAE/REF.

Data Submission

Output from the RAE System takes a variety of forms. For example, reports can be produced as HTML pages, in the University's own in-house style. XML is also available for producing output for use in external programs such as Access or Excel. XML was, successfully, used for returning data in the REF pilot.

Creating the three tables required by the REF was for the most part simply a matter of creating the appropriately formatted reports.

Corporate Systems

The University of Birmingham has the following corporate systems: