Weiner Mark, Sherr Micah, Cohen Abigail
Division of General Internal Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 423 Guardian Drive, Room 1116, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA.
Int J Med Inform. 2002 Apr;65(1):51-8. doi: 10.1016/s1386-5056(02)00002-3.
A wealth of information addressing health status, outcomes and resource utilization is compiled and made available by various government agencies. While exploration of the data is possible using existing tools, in general, would-be users of the resources must acquire CD-ROMs or download data from the web, and upload the data into their own database. Where web interfaces exist, they are highly structured, limiting the kinds of queries that can be executed. This work develops a web-based database interface engine whose content and structure is generated through interaction with a metadata table. The result is a dynamically generated web interface that can easily accommodate changes in the underlying data model by altering the metadata table, rather than requiring changes to the interface code. This paper discusses the background and implementation of the metadata table and web-based front end and provides examples of its use with the NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End-Results (SEER) database.
各种政府机构收集并提供了大量有关健康状况、结果和资源利用的信息。虽然可以使用现有工具来探索这些数据，但一般来说，潜在的资源使用者必须获取光盘或从网络下载数据，并将数据上传到自己的数据库中。在存在网络界面的情况下，它们的结构非常严格，限制了可以执行的查询类型。这项工作开发了一个基于网络的数据库接口引擎，其内容和结构是通过与元数据表的交互生成的。结果是一个动态生成的网络界面，通过更改元数据表可以轻松适应基础数据模型的变化，而无需更改接口代码。本文讨论了元数据表和基于网络的前端的背景和实现，并提供了其与美国国立癌症研究所监测、流行病学和最终结果（SEER）数据库一起使用的示例。
