Integrating TMS with Non-Oracle Systems

You can integrate TMS fully or partially with non-Oracle source data systems, but you must handle the data exchange. In the case of full integration, some customization of the external system is also required.

For more information, see:

• Full Integration
  
• Partial Integration
  

Full Integration

Full integration requires the installation of TMS objects in the external system, a level of integration that is recommended if the external system is running in a stable global Oracle environment. In full integration, TMS maintains external data in both the tms_source_terms table and the tms_vt_omissions table.

A fully integrated system benefits from the full range of TMS functionality. It feeds source terms to TMS with contextual data you specify (such as Document Number) so that if you reclassify or declassify a term in TMS, TMS can send information about each affected source term back to the source data system.

In TMS, you run Autoclassification, manually classify remaining terms (omissions), assign Actions, and reclassify or declassify as necessary. You specify the information you want to derive from TMS for each source term, and TMS sends that data to the source data system associated with each source term.

To fully integrate a non-Oracle system with TMS, you must devise ways to:

• Associate the source term collection unit—a study or case, for example, depending on the source data system—with TMS domains and dictionaries (the X Area is the source term collection unit in both the tms_source_terms table and the tms_vt_omissions table)

• Define objects to receive values derived from TMS

• Integrate TMS with the external system's discrepancy management function

• Exchange data between the two systems

  Note:

  When calling the TMS autocode API from an integrated external system, process terms in dictionary and domain order for best performance.

It may be helpful to read about the way these issues are handled for integration with Oracle Clinical as an example; see Integrating TMS with Oracle Clinical.

In addition, to set up full integration with an external system you must define the external system in TMS; see Defining External System Information in TMS.

Partial Integration

If full integration is not desirable—for example, if space is an issue—you may want to set up TMS with only partial integration to your external source data system. In partial integration, TMS maintains external data in the tms_vt_omissions table only. It does not store any data in the tms_source_terms table.

The external system feeds data to TMS, and TMS returns derived data and omissions. You can classify terms manually and perform all other functions within TMS. However, because the tms_source_terms table is not used, TMS has no external system information (such as document number) associated with source terms and therefore cannot associate derived terms with source terms after the initial classification.

The external system must handle all the data exchange issues and the impact of reclassification and declassification on previously derived data.

• If verbatim terms are reclassified or declassified in TMS after their initial classification, TMS can return this information to the external system but cannot associate it with the original data in that system.

• If source data changes after a data entry update in the external system, TMS can process the new data, but the external system must associate the classifications with the correct original data.

All TMS functions can be performed by API packages called from outside TMS. TMS packages and tables are documented in the Oracle Thesaurus Management System Technical Reference Manual. See The API for a sampling of the packages available.