Getting external data into your store

Extranet 5.6 and 5.7 enabled greater access to the data stored in the underlying database by exposing more data in standard SQL tables and automatically creating SQL Views that simplify the task of authoring SQL Queries to extract information. All of this is intended to support the needs for advanced reporting or data extraction. In other words, they are targeted at getting data out of Extranet. Thinking about how best to get data into the Extranet database is a completely different matter, however.

An Approach to Parallel Amendments

Goals

This post outlines steps to support an implementation for parallel amendments. The described approach is guided by the following principles:

Performance
Only create data that is necessary to support the functional requirements and avoid long running transactions. New amendments should not need to cause the creation of a complete copy of the previously approved protocol.

Ease of Review
Provide features that improve the overall experience of the reviewer.

Efficiency
Avoid the review bottleneck by allowing for amendments of different types to be in process at any given time.

Ease of Maintenance
While supporting the first two principles, the design should minimize redundancy of configuration

This is based upon ideas that have been floating in my head for a while now and largely driven by my desire to effectively support parallel amendments and dramatically reduce the dependence upon clone. We’re in the middle of the first real implementation of this approach and so far so good.