In some student information systems, a parent name is just an attribute of a student and data is stored denormalized and duplicated. Infinite Campus uses a normalized relational database design, so each person only exists once in our database. A parent, student, or staff member is defined as a person record. Each person record is linked to one or more other people through household memberships and relationships.
This unique Census structure in Infinite Campus has many benefits. If a staff member who is also a parent of five children remarries and changes their name, this name only has to be changed once in the system. Phone numbers, email addresses, and physical addresses are also always stored once. In this model, it’s essential to keep data clean and prevent duplicate records. As such, Infinite Campus SIS provides a variety of tools to maintain data integrity.