98/06 - September
Dear Colleague
The HUSID Look-up Service (HLS)
The agency is pleased to announce the launch of the HUSID Look-up Service (HLS). This service will allow institutions to find the HUSID of a student who has previously been included on the HESA Student Record. This circular contains a brief description of the system, and notes on usage.
System Overview
The HLS uses a fuzzy-matching algorithm to find a student's record(s) on the existing HESA database. The items of personal information used in the lookup need to be relatively unchanging over time, but need to provide a key that is sufficiently unique to ensure that incorrect HUSIDs are not returned. The items chosen for the HLS are:
- date of birth
- surname
- forenames
- gender
- last (HESA-returning) institution attended
The HLS requires all five items of data to ensure that the matching algorithm does not send back the wrong HUSID.
The operation of the HLS is easily broken down into 3 stages; registration, submission and response.
Registration
The HLS must be secure since HESA are providing personal information back to external users. In order to accomplish this a registration scheme has been devised whereby an institution provides a response email address (which must be at the institution) and HESA provides a 4 character security code which enables the service. There is no limit to the number of users who can be registered at any institution, but all requests for registration must be made by a HESA student record contact, or other person with suitable authority. A registration form is attached to this circular.
To register a user, please send the following information to Clara Elcocks (ClaraE@hesa.ac.uk) at HESA:
- an email address to which responses will be sent
- a contact name
- a contact email address
- a contact telephone number
- a contact fax number
Submission
An institution submits an HLS request file to ftp.hesa.ac.uk\pub\upload. The name of the file is in the format iiiicccc.hls and is constructed by concatenating the institutions 4 digit institution identifier, the 4-character HLS registration code, and ".hls". There is no separate control file required in the HLS.
The HLS request file must be in a comma-separated format. There should be no double-quoted fields and therefore no field should itself contain a comma. The fields in the HLS Request file are as follows:
| Own identifier | Optional | A field in which the institution can put their own student identifier to aid in linking to the HLS Results file. If this field is not filled in, there must still be a comma before the following field in order to maintain the structure of the file. |
| Date of Birth | Compulsory | The date of birth of the student. This field must be completed with a date in one of the following formats: DD/MM/YYYY or DD-MM-YYYY or YYYYMMDD |
| Surname | Compulsory | The surname of the student |
| Forenames | Compulsory | The forenames of the student |
| Gender | Compulsory | The gender of the student |
| Previous institution | Compulsory | A HESA institution identifier (including any that are no longer used) |
Example HLS Request
The following file contains two requests for the same student.
| ABC1234,10/03/1969,YOUELL,ANDREW,M,0001,19690310,Youell,Andrew,M,0001 |
Response
The HLS response is emailed to the HLS contact at the email address quoted on the registration form. For each record of personal information provided in the HLS request file the possible responses are:
AMBIGUOUS
| HLS Response | Meaning |
|---|---|
| a HUSID | Successful search |
| DUPLICATE | A HUSID was found but it is also in use by another record with a different date of birth |
| NOT-FOUND | No HUSID was found that matched the personal information given |
| More than one HUSID was found that matched the personal information given and it is not possible to determine which (if any) belong to the student in question | |
| INVALID FORMAT | The record is not in the correct format |
| INVALID DOB | The date of birth given is missing or not in the correct format |
| INVALID SURNAME | The surname is missing or not in the correct format |
| INVALID FORENAMES | The forenames are missing or are not in the correct format |
| INVALID GENDER | The gender is missing or is not in the correct format |
| INVALID INSTID | The previous institution identifier is missing or is not in the correct format |
When all the records in the HLS request file have been processed, an HLS response file will be emailed to the registered HLS user. The format of the response file is as follows:
| HLS Response | As listed above | |
| Own identifier | As supplied in request file | |
| Date of Birth | As supplied in request file | |
| Surname | As supplied in request file | |
| Forenames | As supplied in request file | |
| Gender | As supplied in request file | |
| Previous institution | As supplied in request file |
Example HLS Response
The example request file (above) produces the following response file:
| 9410011612274,ABC1234,10/03/1969,YOUELL,ANDREW,M,00019410011612274,,19690310,Youell,Andrew,M,0001 |
Students to be Submitted to the HLS
The HLS searches against a database containing the student records submitted in the ‘July' collections for 1994/95, 1995/96 and 1996/97. When it becomes available, the July 1997/98 data will be added to the service. December returns will not be included in the HLS database.
Since the HLS is only searching against existing HESA datasets, institutions should only submit to the service students who have studied at a HESA-reporting institution (i.e. publicly funded UK HEI) since the reporting period 1994/95.
Institutions may use the HLS to update, in the July return, a HUSID that has been used in that year's December return. This can only be done if this student is in their first year of the programme of study. An institution should not update the HUSID that was used for that student if it was returned in any previous July submission.
Submissions to the HLS
HESA will monitor submissions to the HLS and might ask users to justify strange or unusually large volumes of HLS requests.
If you have any queries about the HLS, please contact the Institutional Liaison team at HESA (liaison@hesa.ac.uk).
Yours sincerely
C Jane Wild
Director of Operations
