The current Student Information System (SIS) in use at SIUC is an IDMS-based mainframe system which was brought online in 1990. With dozens of screens for manual entry of information about each student, along with various other fields not manually accessible, SIS contains a large number of fields of information for a large number of students. For ease and speed of programming against SIS for those users who need to do so, data extracts containing a portion of the fields for a portion of the students are run on a regular basis.

The two main SIS Data Extracts most frequently used at SIUC are the Registration extract (also referred to as "the CPLS") and the Admission extract. Both are available as mainframe disk files. The Registration extract's disk file name is SIS.REG.WEEKLY, and it is normally updated once per week (on Friday night). The Admission extract's disk file name is SIS.ADM.ADMDISK, and it is normally updated twice per week (on Tuesday and Friday nights).

The Admission extract contains information about prospective, pre-enrolled, and newly-enrolled students, while the Registration extract contains information about enrolled and formerly-enrolled students.

The file layout for each extract is divided into segments, the first of which -- the root segment -- occurs once for each record. At the end of the root segment is a series of counters; these counters note the number of occurrences of each of the following segments. While this may sound complicated, users of the Mark IV mainframe programming language really do not have to worry about this, because the built-in file definition handles the addressing of these repeating segments with very little intervention from the user.

For the Registration extract, the Mark IV name for the file definition is SIS-CPLS. For the Admission extract, the Mark IV name for the file definition is SISADMIT. You would see one of these names on the "RC" card near the start of your Mark IV program.

Effective with the Fall 2002 term, the file definition for the Admission extract is being changed. There are a lot of little changes and a few fixes, but the biggest change is the addition of an e-mail segment such as the one that is already included in the Registration extract.

The changes in this new Admission extract should hopefully be pretty unnoticeable for the majority of Mark IV users of this extract. The file definition name remains the same, as does the disk file name and the names of the "generational" tape backup files. The only names that will change are the special archive tape file names: for example, the Fall 2002 Census file will be called SIS.ADM.Y2K.WK2FL02 rather than SIS.ADM.WK2FL02.

Since the new Admission extract is using the same file definition name -- SISADMIT -- as has been used up to this point, any attempt to reference an older archived extract with this name in a Mark IV program will result either in an error or in unexpected results. For those situations, you will need to use the file definition name of SISADMT2 on your "RC" card.

Obviously SAS users will have a bigger adjustment to make, since they have to calculate absolute positions for any fields that they wish to reference. The new glossary referenced above will be essential for those users.

While e-mail address information is available for viewing as part of SIS screens 3 and 10, the real e-mail substance is found on "Electronic Address" screen 14. It is on this screen that you can see multiple e-mail addresses (or fax numbers or Web site addresses), the date when an e-mail address was last maintained, and the fact that an e-mail address may no longer be enabled for use.

When using Mark IV to search for an e-mail address in segment 18, you'll want to consider EADDRTYP (address type) values of "E1" through "E5." In addition, you'll want to make sure that the E-ENABLF (enabled flag) value is "Y," since a value of "N" (which has only recently been utilized) means that an attempted e-mail to this address was rejected. And, just like the proper maintenance of postal addresses, it is preferable to make such a rejected address non-enabled rather than to just delete it. In fact, this enabling feature is one of the options available to the student on SalukiNet, and that's one reason why we should not normally delete an e-mail address unless the student has specifically told us to do so.

For space purposes on a report, keep in mind that even though an e-mail address can be up to 55 characters in length, very few are longer than 30 characters.

By the way, when you see an e-mail address on SIS screen 3 or 10, you are seeing the address that has an EADDRTYP value of "E1." If you don't see an e-mail address on these screens, that does not mean that there are no e-mail addresses, and so you'll need to check SIS screen 14.

The Mark IV coding noted above has been updated to not only allow you to pick one e-mail address in general, but also allow you to pick one "siu.edu" e-mail address separately as well.