G. Reporting profile

In MIS, there is a frequent need to generate various reports. During the code generation process, our generator tool can define a new reporting profile containing all fields from a single database table for which a Windows form is already generated. After all forms have been generated, the end user will have a list of predefined reporting profiles containing all fields from all tables. Each profile contains a list of medical record item elements that can be grouped to achieve more efficient organization of item elements. Groups are particularly useful when one medical record item contains a many elements (30 and more). At run-time, the reporting profiles are used by our report generation software tool [4], the main parts of which are:

• Profile Manager manages profiles used for report generation and provides basic operations on them, such as creating new pro-files, combining existing profiles into new ones, updating and deleting existing profiles. By default, an automatically generated profile contains no groups, only lists medical record item elements. However, groups can be defined through the profile man-ager and item elements can be divided into the defined groups.
• Query Editor is used for interaction with an end user in order to create a query statement containing data profile items.
• Query Parser evaluates the created query statements, converts them into SQL queries and forwards these SQL queries to the data module.
• Data Module manages connection to the MIS database and retrieves the required data from the database.
• Result Providing Module formats the retrieved data and displays them in a specified format.

The main window of the report generation tool is illustrated in Figure 8. On the left side is a tree structure of medical record item elements (groups and item elements that are not members of any group) within the active profile. In the upper part is a list of sub-groups or medical record item elements within the selected medical record item element group. On the right side is a set of buttons for easier query writing. In the central part (with the blue background) is the query editor that enables end users to create query statements by combining medical record item elements (but not groups or sub-groups) and available logical operators (NOT, AND, and OR). The resulting query is closer to spoken language than SQL and, thus, more understandable to medical professionals. Search component