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HESA Student record 2011/12

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HESA Student record 2011/12

File structure


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Version 1.0 Produced 2011-11-14

Data must be returned to HESA as an XML file. XML is the eXtensible Markup Language and is a W3C recommendation. There are many XML training resources on the web, including the W3C Tutorial on XML and the resources of W3Schools.

Files must be encoded with UTF-8 and schema validation will be in place to ensure this. Institutions must specify the encoding used in their XML files in the first line of the file (i.e. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>) and to ensure that their files are actually saved with that encoding. If XML files are edited with some text editors and the encoding is not specified or does not match the actual file encoding, there may be problems when submitting these files for validation.

The physical file structure to be returned to HESA is based on the data model but with repeating elements defined within some of the entities. The repeating elements are:

Entity Repeating element Description
CourseCourseSubjectA JACS2 subject code and a proportion indicator
ModuleModuleSubjectA JACS2 subject code and a proportion indicator
InstanceRAEDataA Unit of Assessment code and a proportion indicator

The physical file structure is described in the diagram below.

Physical data structure Institution Student Student Instance Course Entry Profile Qualifications on Entry Qualifications Awarded Student on Module Module Module Subject Course Subject RAE Data

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