Null course_id in discussion_entry_fact

[milesl]

I'm working with some canvas data flat files, and I noticed that the majority of items in discussion_entry_fact have a null course_id value.

Can anyone tell me what these entries are? How could a discussion reply not be affiliated with a course?

I joined it with discussion_entry_dim to look at the posts themselves, and I don't see any clear pattern to suggest what's causing this.

[ColinMurtaugh]

Hi @milesl -- 

Some discussions are associated with Groups rather than Courses; I'd guess this is where your mystery discussion entries live. If you look at the associated discussion_topic_fact records, I suspect that you'll find that they have a group_id populated instead of a course_id. 

--Colin