[LON-CAPA-admin] Student ID numbers

[Guy Albertelli II]

Hi Mark,

> I asked this same question in December, and Stuart Raeburn sent me an
> excellent response on this list dated December 20, 2003. 

Todd is refering to
http://mail.lon-capa.org/pipermail/lon-capa-admin/2003-December/000467.html

Which now that I reread it has one error in it that I noticed, which
is

Stuart says:

> This discrepancy comes about because updating a class list with the
> "Disable ID/Student Number Safeguard and Force Change of Conflicting
> IDs" checkbox checked causes the following:
>
> (a) update of the studentID to the new value in the user's
> environment.db file in the user's directory in lonUsers, e.g., for
> user smith, in lonUsers/domain/s/m/i/smith
>
> (b) update of the studentID in the classlist.db file in the course
> to which you are uploading a class list file but NOT in the
> classlist.db files for any OTHER courses in which the student is (or
> was) enrolled. 

He is missing

(c) updates the ID -> student name mapping file
 lonUsers/domain/ids.db

And if you follow this course of action that Stuart suggest:

> This behavior, suggests that you have one other course of action, if
> persistence of old-style studentIDs in class lists for existing
> courses is not an issue.  You could simply leave the student IDs
> defined in the users' environment.db files to remain as they are
> now, but when adding new class lists via ENRL -> "Upload a class
> list", use the new style student IDs in the class list files.  The
> act of upload would cause the user's student ID to switch from the
> old to the new.


Means that you will need to always check the 'Disable ID/Student Number
Safeguard and Force Change of Conflicting IDs' as long as there is a
chance that you might have an old student that has an original id.

(This reverse mapping file is used if you ever need to look a user up
by student number rather than student name which is an uncommon
activity for the most part.)

-- 
guy at albertelli.com  LON-CAPA Developer  0-7-4-9-