About Application Development

The Oracle Life Sciences Data Hub allows you to load data from different external systems (and from different trials on the same system), merge data and produce reports for interim analysis and clinical trial reporting, all in compliance with industry regulations.

The Oracle LSH allows you to load data from different external systems (and from different trials on the same system), merge data and produce reports for interim analysis and clinical trial reporting, all in compliance with industry regulations.

To accomplish any of these goals you must develop an application. An application typically loads data from an external system or reads Oracle LSH data, merges and/or transforms the data, and produces one or more of the following outputs:

• Reports. An application may generate simple reports—figures, listings, and tabulations—on data in any standard format such as TXT or EPS.
• Report Sets. An application may create a complex single- or multi-volume set of reports with a single table of contents. With Oracle XML Publisher you can create custom templates and use them to produce PDF outputs.
• Data Marts. An application may generate large data files in any of the following formats: text, Oracle Export, SAS X-port, SAS C-port, or SAS data sets. (The SAS formats are available only if you have SAS).
• Data Visualizations. An application may make data available so that users can create ad hoc data queries in a tabular or graphical display using Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition.

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs): To transform data or produce reports, including the reports in Report Sets, you can use one of the several development environments, including SAS, SQL*Plus, SQL Developer, Oracle Reports, Oracle Business Intelligence Publisher (BIP) or any other system for which your company has built or bought an Oracle LSH adapter (products not produced by Oracle are not included with Oracle LSH and all Oracle products may not be included either; check with Oracle Sales for information). In each environment, you write a program or create a report as usual in that environment. You then store the source code in Oracle LSH under version control. When you run the program in Oracle LSH, the system sends the job to the appropriate engine for execution and stores the results in Oracle LSH with the security you specify.

For example, if you have SAS installed on your personal computer you can launch SAS directly from Oracle LSH and view Oracle LSH data from SAS as you develop your SAS program.

Using Existing Programs: If you have already developed SAS, PL/SQL, or Oracle Reports programs that you want to continue to use, you can upload them to Oracle LSH.

Using Existing Data Sets, Tables, and Data Text Files: You can load SAS data sets, Oracle tables, or text data files into Oracle LSH. Oracle LSH can read the structure of data sets and tables in an external system and automatically create Oracle LSH Tables with the same structure: Columns with the same data types, length, and name as the external table columns or data set variables. (Every Oracle LSH Table has all the required attributes of a SAS data set and an Oracle table.)

You can load data into Oracle LSH using text files in either fixed or delimited format. However in this case you must manually create the target Oracle LSH Tables before loading the data into them.

If you use Oracle Clinical, you can import all your Oracle Clinical Global Library questions, question groups, and discrete value groups, which Oracle LSH converts automatically to Oracle LSH Tables and other data structures.