By Megan Walker, Product Manager, Data and Analytics, Product Management
Originally published July 11, 2019
What’s the Difference between Advanced and Brightspace Data Sets?
We often get asked the difference between Advanced Data Sets and Brightspace Data Sets. They each have their time and place so below is a description of each type to learn more.
Data Hub
Data Hub is the UI where the Advanced Data Sets and Brightspace Data Sets can be accessed. It is available to all Brightspace Core clients to use on their production site. The goal with Data Hub is to deliver data access in a consolidated location.
Advanced Data Sets
Advanced Data Sets (ADS) are reports that can be run on demand with user defined filters such as dates and org units. The value of ADS’s is that they answer specific questions on their own without having to join with another data set. They are great for ad hoc investigations. ADS’s can be downloaded through the UI or accessed through APIs.
A List of Advanced Data Sets is available in Administrator Documentation. The data behind these data sets is updated daily.
Brightspace Data Sets
Brightspace Data Sets (BDS) are extracts of very specific domains that can be joined together in a flexible way to build reports. Users do not set filters for these reports as all data is included. BDS’s can be downloaded through the UI or accessed through APIs to be loaded into a database and sliced and diced to build reports and draw conclusions.
We offer full data sets that contain all historical data, or up to 3 years for data sets with a large number of rows such as User Logins and Session History, that generate on a weekly frequency. We also offer differential data sets that contain the updates, inserts and soft-deletes (where they exist) from the previous day that generate on a daily frequency. For details about data freshness and add-on packages for more frequent data generation, refer to BDS Schedules.
We have over 100 BDS’s with new ones planned for the upcoming releases. Reference tables for all BDS's are available in Administrator Documentation under About Brightspace data sets.
Related Documentation