There is scope to improve the other report generation functionality in DHIS 1.3, and this is an important part of DHIS 2.0, which needs a Java implementation of reports. Reports will often need to be highly customized to a particular country, province or local health unit, thus it would be desireble if a simple GUI for user editing of reports could be made available.
Development of report and analysis modules for DHIS
Background
Developing report modules is an important part of the DHIS 2.0
development
project. Report modules do not interfere with the core module and can therefore be developed independently of the work on the core module.
Furthermore, the report modules use a data mart file as data source and not the active data file used in the core module. This data mart file can easily be on the same structure in 1.3, 1.4 and 2.0 and hence the report modules can be used for any of the three versions. This makes it very attractive to develop report modules as they can be put in real use right away.
Requirements
-Reports
We need both stand-alone and web-based modules.
Furthermore, an important requirement is to develop modules that cover the whole range of users from the non-skilled to the experts. In terms of functionality this means covering "everything" from one-click print of pre-defined reports to complex design of generic reports and business analysis.
- Several available java open source java report tools that will
facilitate the development:
Pivot table analysis
- [[http://books.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=130303&cid=10870183 Advanced GPL Data Mining Tools]]
[Pivot table analysis]
- O'reilly's thin "Transact SQL Cookbook about Pivot Tables
- [[http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/19/2012256&threshold=0&tid=192&tid=185&tid=201&tid=6&tid=218 Pivot Table book]]
- http://monetdb.cwi.nl/
The Excel pivot tables are used extensively with DHIS 1.3 for analysis
of data. Dynamic cross-tabulating and drill-downs are popular features
that are useful to the health information officers. Moving away from the
Microsoft platform we need to find Open Source alternatives to the
functionality of Excel. There is a need for both stand-alone modules as
well as web-based modules providing pivot tables. There is already a
web-based pivot tool developed by HISP, an .asp web application
supporting Access and SQL Server. This again demands the Microsoft platform,
however just at the server side.
There some technology available that hopefully will be useful in
developing these modules. OpenOffice is an open source alternative to
Microsoft Office, and the spreadsheet application has a feature similar
to the pivot tables, the data pilot. Furthermore, there is a Java tool
called jPivot that can be helpful:
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://jpivot.sourceforge.net/
(uses Mondrian as its OLAP server, see below)
More advanced analysis of data
We need efficient tools for analysing/retrieving data. For
instance Mondrian: Mondrian is an OLAP (online analytical processing)
database written in Java. It implements the MDX language, and the XML
for
Analysis and JOLAP specifications. It reads from SQL and other data
sources,
and aggregates data in a memory cache. See
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mondrian/ for more info.
Another tool that might be relevant is MonetDB: MonetDB is a database
management system developed from a main-memory perspective using a
fully
decomposed storage model, automatic index management, extensibility of
data
types and search accellerators, SQL- and XML- frontends. See
http://sourceforge.net/projects/monetdb/ for more info.
I'm sure there are others - my point is that whereas large centralized organizations often would separate the three aspects above (separate transaction databases, one large data warehouse, Lotus Notes or Exchange for communication), most DHIS users (at least at sub-national levels) do not have the infrastructure, personnel and support to run multiple sophisticated systems like that.
Architecture:
These modules must be database (DBMS) independent, at least support the most used OSS and commercial DBMSs (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Access, SQL Server).
Time perspective
Given that the report modules are compatible with existing and running versions of the DHIS it is of course desirable to develop these modules as soon as possible, let's say within 3 months. It is a good way to get the DHIS 2.0 development process kick-started.
