[Using Sakai] external access to Sakai data to automate reports?

[Steve Swinsburg]

Hi Gregory,

Even though the page was last updated in 2009, it is still current. Creating quartz jobs does require code. Quartz is a job scheduler like cron, and is built into Sakai, but you still need to tell it what to do, i.e. the job, which is a Java class.

For invoking Sakai services you need to use dependency injection, or the Sakai Component Manager. If you aren't a developer then this may be tricky.

For web services, same deal, you need to write a web service that wraps the logic of what you want it to do.

For viewing the database, you can use a GUI tool to connect and view the various Sakai tables and data contained within.

Others may have different solutions for their reporting needs. Generally a DB query is all I do, when I need it. Because there is so much data, having a too lot build reports in this manner could be complex. There could be a nice way to have a large number of pre configured reports though which would be useful. Does the reporting in SiteStats give you what you need? You can save reports in there.

cheers,
Steve



On 03/08/2012, at 10:12 PM, Gregory Guthrie <guthrie at mum.edu> wrote:

> Very interesting, thanks.
>  
> As  new user of Sakai, and non-developer involvement, I wonder about some of the details of how to do one of these, and/or which is the simplest for what I want.
>  
> The Quartz+Sakai is very neat, but the web page seems to indicate that it is out of date (last update 2009) and needs code changes to work, and I didn’t see any even simple examples of how to use it for invoking internal Sakai functions like statistics. Offhand it looks like I would have to grok a lot of Sakai internals and access through Java code.
>  
> It’s such a neat idea, I’m somewhat surprised it is not more mainstream as a Sakai built-in tool.
>  
> Similarly for writing a new web-service, I think it’s beyond the level of time I have right now to delve into Sakai internals and coding.
>  
> To query the Database directly, where would I go to browse the schema and layout to see how to do this; any known examples that you might know of?
>  
> It seems to me that since federal financial aid regulations require monitoring student attendance in all DE courses, this must be something that all of the “big-guys” have already solved, and I hope to not have to re-invent (re-implement!) anything new here. I’m starting small, but I’d think that the areas of overall site reporting automation by institutions would be something important and well established by now.
>  
> Thanks again.
> Subject: Re: [Using Sakai] external access to Sakai data to automate reports?
>  
> Hi Gregory,
>  
> Assuming you are using SiteStats, you could create a quartz job that uses the SiteStats APIs to generate the data and then run it periodically. Alternatively, if you wanted it more remotely you could create a web service wrapper around the API and do it that way. You could also go straight to the DB and query any table you wanted, which generally is fine for reads.
>  
> See https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/DOC/Quartz+in+Sakai
>  
> cheers,
> Steve

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