Validating data configurations

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Only data configurations that have passed a validation process are available for use during Empirica Signal activities. You must validate or re-validate a data configuration in the following situations:

• When it has been newly created.
• When it has been modified in any way, including changes to permissions.
• When it has been newly imported.

The validation process might generate warnings and errors. If warnings (but no errors) are generated, you can ignore them so that the data configuration passes validation. If errors are generated, you must correct them before the data configuration passes validation.

You can either validate a single data configuration, after modifying it, or validate multiple data configurations at the same time. For example, if you import multiple configurations, you might want to validate them all at once.

1.         Click Settings.

The Settings page appears.

2.         In the Configure System section, click Manage Configurations.

The Manage Configurations page appears.

3.         To validate a single data configuration that you have just modified, click the row menu () for a configuration, and then click Edit.

The Modify Configuration page appears.

A.        Click Validate Now.

1. If you select Validate Now, the application validates the data configuration. If valid, click Continue.

or

To validate multiple data configurations at the same time, on the Manage Configurations page, click Validate Configurations. For example, if you import multiple data configurations, you can validate them all at once. When you validate multiple data configurations, the validation process is a background job that continues to run even if you exit the application.

The Configuration Validation page appears, showing the data configuration name, description, and validation status of each data configuration.

A.         Check the data configurations that you want to validate. (You can also check Check All or Check None.)

B.        Click Validate.

While the validation process runs, validation results are displayed.

4.         When validation is complete, click Continue.

5.         If necessary, edit the configuration and revalidate it.

Validation process

During validation, the application does the following:

• Shows errors and warnings, if any—If there are errors, you cannot save the data configuration. Warning messages are prefaced by Warning. To ignore warning messages, check Ignore Warnings.
• Runs the Oracle ANALYZE command for tables, if necessary, for tables that contain actual case data—This command generates statistics on the underlying data. Oracle uses the statistics to optimize the performance of SQL commands, which the application uses for such tasks as displaying results. The ANALYZE command is run automatically during Empirica Signal installation. If views (rather than tables) are referenced, the ANALYZE command is run on the underlying table(s).
• Creates a unique values table for any variable of the selection type Distinct Value List, Select from Drug Hierarchy, or Select from Event Hierarchy, but does not have an associated unique values table—Although you cannot save a new data configuration in this state, it is possible for imported data configurations to be in this state.
• Creates Oracle column indexes for columns referenced by any variable, if they do not already exist—If a variable references a column in a view, no index is added.

Situations that generate error or warning messages

Situations that generate an error message or warning message include the following:

• There are no variables defined for the configuration.
• There is not a variable of the type Report ID for each source database table referenced by the data configuration.
• The configuration has more than one variable of the type External Report ID.
• There are leading or trailing white spaces in the source data for a variable. Manually entered values that do not also include the leading or trailing spaces do not match the source data. For example, when entering data values in the Query Wizard or specifying drugs or events as selection criteria for run results.
• Database is timestamped is checked for the data configuration, but each source database table referenced by the data configuration does not have a variable of the type Valid Start Date and a variable of the type Valid End Date. Note that the source database table must contain columns (of the Oracle data type DATE) representing start and end dates for the data configuration to reference them.
• There is no drilldown map table defined for the data configuration.
• The drilldown map table does not include a row for the LIST, CASE, DRUG, or EVENT sections.
• The data configuration includes a variable of the selection type Select from Event Hierarchy or Select from Drug Hierarchy, but no event or drug hierarchy account is specified for the configuration.
• The data configuration includes a variable of the selection type Select from Event Hierarchy or Select from Drug Hierarchy, but the variable type is not Event or Drug, or no hierarchy level is set for the variable.
• Database is timestamped is checked for the data configuration, but there is not at least one variable for each source database table referenced by the drilldown map table.