by Amrita Thakur, Senior Product Manager, Product Management D2L
Originally published 1 May 2018
Description of the Change
We are now starting to introduce soft-deletes in Brightspace Data Sets. A soft-delete is defined as information that has been removed from the Brightspace Application and is no longer available in the UI but tracked in the database.
Based on customer feedback we will be making soft-deletes available in a sub-set of the data sets beginning the May release. Please bookmark or follow this blog post as we will continue to update it with the details of the data sets where soft deletes will make additional rows and columns of data visible.
There are two ways in which you should expect soft-deletes to manifest in the data sets.
Explicit Deletes:
This is where the data set contains rows that can be deleted via the application and this is surfaced in the data set via the following means
- Deleted rows appear in the data set
Additional columns are added to the data set to indicate which rows are deleted. These include
- IsDeleted (required boolean indicated that this is a deleted row)
- DeletedDate (optional if available indicating when the row was deleted)
- DeletedByUser (optional if available indicating who deleted this from the application)
Implicit Deletes:
This is when the rows in the data set cannot be deleted themselves, but they are filtered out because they are associated with a deleted base object. These filtered rows are surfaced in the data set. No additional new columns are added. Clients should join this data set with the corresponding base data set to determine which rows are associated with a deleted based object.
For example:
Gradebook Settings cannot be deleted themselves but are filtered out of the data set when associated with a deleted Org Unit.
Changes in the May 2018 Release
Org Units Data Set
The Org Units data set includes rows of data that have been soft deleted or recycled.
Soft delete indicates that the org unit has been soft deleted from the application, but is still present in the database.
Recycled indicates that the org unit remains in the recycle bin until removed, at which point it is deleted.
The following columns appear at the end of the data set: IsDeleted, DeletedDate, and RecycledDate.
Gradebook Settings Data Set
The Gradebook Settings data set includes rows associated with deleted org units, but no new columns will be added.
Who is impacted by the change?
- All clients who currently have Datahub and the Brightspace Data Sets will be impacted by this release.
When will the change take effect?
- The first two data sets that will include data related to soft-deletes will be available in the May release. Both the June and July releases will also have additional data sets that include soft-deletes.
Do I have the option of opting into this change?
- The data in the data sets will be updated across the board for all clients. There isn't an opt-in for this change.
What should I consider at my end to ensure adoption of these changes?
- Please review any queries you have that are written against the data sets described above that will now include additional rows of data referring to implicit or explicit soft-deletes. Once the data sets are released, you may want to modify those queries to exclude soft-deletes from them.
Is there documentation that I can provide to my end users to help them understand and incorporate the changes?
- The changes for each data set are documented in our data sets documentation available here.
Are there any additional items I should be aware of?
- There are no additional items at this point beyond what is described in the change description.
How can I provide feedback associated with this change?
- Please provide any ongoing feedback as a response to this blog post.