As we continue to bring you new and updated Brightspace Data Sets (BDS), we are also working towards more consistency between our many BDS. You will notice a couple of changes to our Bit and DateTime columns filtering their way through to various BDS over the next several releases. We categorize these as Minor changes with Moderate CD disruption as per our Change Management Policy. We are communicating these changes in the Release Notes, starting with the October 2024/20.24.10 release.
Bit Columns
Back in 2020 we standardized the data types used in our BDS documentation – refer to Standardization of Data Types in Brightspace Data Sets Documentation for more details. One of the changes was using Bit instead of Boolean for our documentation. At that time, it was only our documentation that was standardized – those columns documented as Bit could still have any of the following sets of values in the CSV output:
- 0, 1, NULL
- True, False, NULL
- TRUE, FALSE, NULL
We are working towards using TRUE, FALSE, NULL for all Bit columns. Over time you will see the way the Bit data is represented within our BDS change slightly so that we can become more consistent across all our data sets.
Note: It's important to understand that in the CSV files, "NULL" values are not represented as the actual text "NULL". Instead, they appear as empty fields (""). This distinction is crucial for users interpreting data accurately.
What does this mean? If you are hardcoding your workflows or automations to use specific strings, they could be impacted by the standardization. Instead, we recommend configuring your target database or BI tool to expect the column to be a BIT or BOOLEAN value. This configuration should accommodate any of our representations of BIT values, provided that your automation and workflows are directly importing the data from the CSV into the database or workflow.
DateTime Columns
Another one of the changes in how we have documented data types since 2020 is using SQL Server DateTime2 instead of DateTime. Some clients noticed that our output of these columns included trailing zeros, which is not a standard way to represent this data. Therefore, moving forward you will notice DateTime2 columns in our BDS drop the trailing zeros.
For example, some data sets represent DateTime values like 2023-10-14T17:21:59.015000Z where the last three digits are always 0, and some represent the values like 2023-10-14T17:21:59.015Z. We are standardizing data sets to represent values like 2023-10-14T17:21:59.015Z, eliminating unnecessary trailing zeros and ensuring a uniform representation across all our data sets
In addition to these changes, we understand the importance of effectively leveraging data to support course progress, learner success and overall course evaluation. To help you navigate these updates and make the most of your data, we recommend the Tips & Tricks: Data Webinar Series.