Defining and Using Format Masks

To batch-load data into Oracle Clinical, you must create or select a format mask with which you specify how the data in your files corresponds to fields in Oracle Clinical. Masks achieve this correspondence in two different ways:

• Positional masks define a length for each column in the data file; for example, the STANDARD format mask (described below) assigns the first ten characters to the Investigator, the following ten characters to the site name, and so on.
• Delimited masks have no set column length and separate column values with a user-defined delimiter character such as a comma (,). Flexibility in field length can save space.

Note:

You cannot load multibyte data using positional format masks, including the STANDARD format mask supplied by Oracle. Use delimited masks for this purpose.

Oracle Clinical ships with a predefined format mask of the fixed or positional type. You can define your own format masks as required.

See the following:

• STANDARD Mask Format
  The STANDARD mask is the format used by default when a new data file is created.
• User-Specified Formats
  
• Normalized Lab Data