Tutortrac database design

Tutortrac’s database setup is interesting.  There is only one database of students and this database gets updated each time there is an upload.  What this means is that individual semesters aren’t repositories of snapshot data.  For example, you can’t go back six years, say, to find out how many freshmen came to your center.  Why?  Because all of the freshmen have now graduated and they are no longer freshmen.  For this reason, you cannot do trend analysis on key metrics without having saved each semester’s data outside of Tutortrac.  No one would think to do this as this peculiar behavior is not widely publicized and unless you’re a database expert it’s unlikely that you’d ask.  This is not a feature.  It was a poor design decision that speaks to the disconnect between what users need and what RedRock is prepared to deliver.  Certainly there should be more documentation available and perhaps popup notification every time that an upload is attempted.  There should also be a one click function for exporting the database into some separate repository where it can be easily accessed when needed.

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