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We are very excited to share that Canvas Data 2 has evolved from infancy into adolescence. We started last year in June with inputs and feedback from 13 Alpha customers from two regions and have grown to over 100 Beta customers around the world. The maturity will continue to accelerate as Canvas Data 2 is made publicly available in March. At full maturity, Canvas Data 2 will evolve to become a modern data access platform that will provide developers with efficient and flexible access to data from various Instructure products in bulk with high fidelity and low latency.
During the Alpha and Beta phases, we have focused on the following:
Canvas Data 2 will be released no later than the end of March. In terms of datasets, this initial release will contain this set of Canvas data tables. We are aware that many customers leverage Apache weblogs (requests tables) and Catalog data. Those datasets will be added in the second quarter of the year. Nevertheless, we encourage all users to start planning their transition as soon as Canvas Data 2 becomes available. Because the CD1 and CD2 pipelines are not compatible, consuming table deltas require changes in the ETL given that the schema has also changed. For more details please see the CD1-CD2 comparison below.
To assist customers with the transition, we are planning to provide a reference solution for downloading and importing data into a database. Furthermore, a data mapping sheet is being prepared to explain the CD1 to CD2 schema differences if you need to remap existing reports and dashboards. Both of these are a work in progress and we are hoping to release them by the end of March.
Given the release of our new data pipeline, the target date for sunsetting CD1 is the end of 2023. By this date we are expecting all CD1 customers to have transitioned to Canvas Data 2 to benefit from the new feature set and fresher data.
* Customers may opt to use Instructure Professional Services to perform data warehousing services for a cost. Those customers who have purchased the Hosted Data Services will have their data warehouse transitioned automatically. Additional migration support for queries, integrations, or consulting can be purchased for an additional fee.
Customer onboarding requires loading an institution’s data into the data lake so that it can be consumed via the CD2 API or CLI. Onboarding for CD2 will happen in a phased manner:
The Canvas Data 2 offering is a service that enables institutions to download their raw data across various Instructure products. It is a revamp and expansion of our “Canvas Data'' offering. The purpose of this offering is to allow institutions’ IT & data teams to retrieve LMS data in bulk and keep it up to date (≤ 4 hours data freshness). Data can be used to conduct research and build custom reports, dashboards and tools to meet the unique needs of the institution. It allows access to high-fidelity source data and is more granular than the existing Canvas Data 1 star schema. It is also worth noting that Canvas Data 2 as a product doesn’t provide users with custom data request tooling. In other words, there is no reporting engine on top of the data to produce custom data extracts. Canvas Data 2 has a defined relational schema as opposed to the Canvas Data 1 star schema which dictates what is available in each file.
API Usage Workflow
High Level Comparison between CD1 and CD2
Features |
Canvas Data |
Canvas Data 2 |
Latency (data freshness) |
24 – 48 hours |
≤ 4 hours |
Table snapshot |
✓ |
✓ |
Table deltas (incremental query) Includes deleted records |
X |
✓ |
CLI |
✓ |
✓ |
API |
✓ |
✓ |
UI downloads |
✓ |
X |
Schema |
Star schema |
Relational schema |
Schema versioning |
✓ |
✓ |
Available in all regions |
✓ |
✓ |
Canvas LMS data |
65 dimensions |
90 unique datasets |
Multiple file format |
tsv flat files |
json ✓ csv ✓ tsv ✓ parquet ✓ |
Features/data not included in the initial release (GA) but which we are considering for future releases in 2023 |
||
Weblogs aka requests |
✓ |
Target Q2 |
Catalog data |
✓ |
Target Q2 |
New quizzes |
|
TBC |
Mobile data |
|
TBC |
Pageviews |
|
TBC |
Let our platform journey begin.
The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.
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The content in this blog is over six months old, and the comments are closed. For the most recent product updates and discussions, you're encouraged to explore newer posts from Instructure's Product Managers.