The Technical Characteristics of CSM™

The Database used by CSM™

During our initial search for a quality database to accompany our software systems the Oracle® representatives had made the following statement to us: "Install the database and then ... forget it!" At that time we thought that this was a joke! Well that was our mistake back then!

It should be mentioned that during the 6 years lifetime of our medical software ePraxis™ at the Greek National Insurance Body, (TYPET), the database did not fault even once! Even after a power cut ePraxis™ continued and continues to operate normally without any data loss! Choosing Oracle® has been and remains one of the best choices we have made.

At the same time we are compelled to bless our beard as well. Responsible, careful and rigorous planning is needed to achieve and optimize a database. Our strategic decision to register large volumes of digital imagery data such as photographic images and all kinds of graphics in encrypted form in operational system files rather on database tables played an important role.

Against the advice of some colleagues, the decision to register in the database only the path names of files and images in encrypted operating system files has proven to be the right choice. The advantages are numerous. To mention but few:

(a) The presentation and management of client queries is performed much faster over networks.

Consider the following real case. The Greek National Insurance Body, (TYPET), has two main medical centers located in Athens and Sallonika, 580Km apart from each other. The Oracle® server is located in Athens. A subset of its 53000 members are resident near the region of Sallonika whose X-Rays and any other kind of medical imagery is stored in the file server in Sallonika. Their medical files are stored in the Athens Oracle® main server of course. You can imagine the clinical time wasted for a doctor in Sallonika in having to wait for a transfer of a 8Mb in size X-Ray to arrive at his work unit, in the case where that X-Ray was stored within the database tables in the Athens Server. There is a small price to pay of course when a member from Sallonika visits a doctor at the Athens Medical Center. However this happens rarely and cannot be taken into consideration.

(b) Restoring or moving the database for further development in different servers results in much faster times.

Based on our optimized database design the net volume size of such data at TYPET after 5 years in operation is only 75Mb! Any further comments would be meaningless!

Is a Database Administrator, (DBA), Needed?

For Medical Centers and Insurance Bodies that use the paid-up Oracle® 10g, without any doubt the answer is affirmative "Yes." You should not confuse a Systems Administrator to that of a certified Oracle® DBA! The role of a DBA may take up additional roles such as gathering and presenting statistical data to the Management for decision-making.

For small and medium size Medical Centers that use the freely distributed Oracle®/XE and a “Service Contract” from us, the answer is “No”. In all cases EiS or its partner will act as an appointed DBA to restore and fix any impairment of the CSM™ package and tune up the database provided that the operation of your network is correct. Please note that a computer network in itself requires professional support.

See some of the Qualitative Characteristics of our ERP Sales Management System CSM™.