Developing Standard Objects and Modular Applications

You can reduce the amount of time required to develop Oracle LSH applications by developing standard object definitions and reusing them as much as possible. To encourage programmers to reuse standard definitions, make it clear which definitions are standard by storing them in a special library (for example, a Standards Domain) and/or classifying them as Standard, for example.

Following are a few strategies for developing standards in object definition:

• Develop standard Table definitions. If you have a standard set of Tables, with standard data types and lengths for corresponding columns in different Tables, then you can easily reuse the same Table definition at different points in the data flow, and write standard Programs to read from and write to the standard Tables.

  You can develop your own company standards or use external standards. For example, if you plan to submit drug approval applications to the FDA using the CDISC data model, you may want to use the CDISC standards as your company standards and use Oracle LSH Programs to convert your existing data.

  The standard data model you use must be compatible with the data model of the source system(s) you use.

• Define more Programs with a smaller scope instead of fewer Programs with a larger scope. You can then use the smaller-scope Programs as modules in multiple applications.

  For example, rather than define a single Program to combine data from different studies and then analyze the data, define two separate Programs, one to combine data and the other to analyze data. Both Programs are reusable in more situations. You can reuse the combining Program before different analytical Programs, and you can reuse the analytical Program, perhaps with minor modifications, on data from either a single study or multiple studies, for example.

  You can include a series of Programs in a single Workflow, so that you can run all the Programs in a single process.

• Make executable object definitions more reusable by defining Parameters to control the data to be processed.

  For example, if you want to use the same Program to generate a Demography Report in several different studies, create a Parameter to contain the study name. You can either make the Study Parameter enterable by the user who runs the report, or, in the Execution Setup for each instance, bind the Study Parameter to the value appropriate for each study.