Data Interoperability

This article describe the data-interoperability features present in version 3.2 and later.

Exporting Data

The essential means by which data can be made to other systems is through the custom reporting system, which consists of two major components, the form relationship and the report.

Form Relationships

A form relationship describe the basic relationships of the various forms within the system. A form relationship begins by choosing a primary form for the relationship. Once a primary form has been chosen for the relationship, you may limit the instances of the forms chosen by describing a limit as in Technical Overview: Limiting Forms.

For any form in a form relationship, you can adjoin an additional form which somehow links to that form. That link can either be either through the parent/child relationship or through the mapped values relationship. Any joined form can then be limited as the primary form was.

Form relationships can either be defined using configuration (XML) data, or via the on-line GUI tool.

Example

You may wish to create a form relationship in iHRIS Manage that describes all current employees, their salaries, and their supervisors. Here is an outline of how to define this relationship:

• Start with the primary form 'person_position' and limit to those positions which the 'end_date' field is not null.
• Join to the primary form the 'person' form where the 'person' form is a parent of the 'person_position' form
• Join to the primary form the 'salary' form where 'salary' is a child of 'person_position' and where the 'start_date' field for 'salary' is maximal
• Join to the primary form the 'position' form where the field 'position' of the primary 'person_position' form maps to that position. Call this the 'employee_position' form.
• Join to the 'position' form the 'person' form where the 'supervisor' field of the 'position' form maps to that position. Call this joined form the 'supervisor_position' to distinguish it from the 'employee_posititon' form.
• Join to the 'supervisor_position' the 'person_position' form whose 'position' field is the value of 'supervisor_position' form. Call this the 'supervisor_person_position'
• Join to the 'supervisor_person_position' form the 'person' form which is a parent of the form.

Custom Report

Once a form relationship has been defined, a report can built by selecting the data fields which are relevant to this report. The system will then create a table in the database which holds the data in the report, the columns of which are the selected fields, and the rows of which are each the collection of forms satisfying the form relationship.

Currently, this data can be view through the web browser, exported to a CSV file, exported to a HTML file, printed as PDF, and viewed with charting software. There are plans to make available the data via other formats, such as the Indicator Exchange Format (IXF). The various exports of the data are defined by subclassing I2CE_CustomReport_Display as appropriate.