APIII - Advancing Practice, Instruction & Innovation Through Informatics

Data Manipulation using a Personal Computer

Umadevi Katta, (kattau@wcmc.com) Department of Pathology, New York Medical College, Balhalla, NY
 
Content: By using a report mining / data mining tool such as Monarch, viewing, printing, analysis and extraction of data from existing computer reports can be done. When a computer prints out a report, it creates a report with characters and control codes required by a printer to produce the actual report printout. Monarch reads the same report file and creates a softcopy of the report on screen, with live data to work with. Monarch Pro accesses database files, including dBase, Paradox, MS-Excel, MS-Access and ODBC compatible data sources, such as SQL Server, Oracle, DB2 and others in addition to report files. Monarch does not alter input files.

Technology: Minimum System Requirements: Windows 98, NT 4.0 SP6, or ME, 2000, XP, 2003 or higher, 64 MB RAM, 80 MB HD, Pentium Class CPU, 16 bit Color Display.
Software used: Windows XP, MS Access & Excel 2000, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, Monarch V8 Pro, 175 Cabot Street, Suite 503, Lowell, MA 01854.
Anatomic pathology system: SoftPath Version 4.2, Soft Computer, 5400 Tech Data Drive, Clearwater, FL 33760.
User skill level: Intermediate proficiency in using MS Access 2000. Programming skills are not needed.

Design: Data can be extracted and / or manipulated like sorting, filtering, adding calculated fields or user defined fields. Data drilling up (collapsing) and drilling down (expanding) can be done. Summaries can be created and exported into applications such as MS Word, MS Excel and MS Access. External Lookup: Two or more database tables can be linked, when linking two database tables; both tables must contain one or more link fields with common name, type and values. Up to nine external lookups are supported in a single Monarch session.