dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Knut Staring <knutst@xxxxxxxxx>]

I fully agree, Jason - not having an easy way to browse through the actual
data other than the data entry screen is a problem.

The reason for the idea behind the "data browser" in the first place was
frustration with how hard it was to find out where there actually is data
when approaching e.g. the demo database (or indeed any unknown database) -
the only way to find out (short of querying the db directly) was to click
through a lot of periods for each dataset in the data entry screen, which is
both inefficient and unintuitive. So what we have now  is a pretty useful
tool to locate the data, but what it lacks is an easy way to see the actual
data - for that you have to make a note of where the data is, and then
return to the data entry screen - talk about cumbersome....

I think the current data browser should therefore be extended with links to
the actual data, presented in neat tables (perhaps something like the
current "web pivot", and with an easy way of "flipping through" screens
(i.e. move backwards or forwards in time by clicking on some Ajax arrows or
similar). But it should also be possible to go directly to this screen from
a menu selection, populated with the latest data. This new functionality
should be the "Data browser".

The current "Data browser" could perhaps be renamed "Data locator" - or does
someone have a better name?

Knut

On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 5:20 PM, Jason Pickering <
jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Dear Devs,
> I have been working to document the Maintenance section of DHIS2, and
> have a few observations and would like to have some feedback before I
> file, what I think should be a blueprint.
>
> One of my big complaints about DHIS2 is that it is exceedingly
> difficult to simply browse data that has been entered. One can create
> a report (rather painful) or use the data entry screens to browse
> data, but this too seems a bit of a kludge, when I might just want to
> simply quickly view data for a given orgunit/period/dataset
> combination. This is a very common operation on the part of users. I
> was expecting to find this in the "Data browser", however, this is not
> exactly what the data browser does, as far as I can tell. The data
> browser provides a summary of the data contained in the database,
> providing the number of data element values that are present, and they
> can be grouped a couple of different ways. I have reviewed the
>
> /dhis2/dhis-2/dhis-api/src/main/java/org/hisp/dhis/databrowser/DataBrowserTable.java
> and also crosschecked this against the screen found at
> (
> http://dhis.uio.no/demo/dhis-web-maintenance-dataadmin/searchResult.action?periodTypeId=Monthly&fromDate=2009-04-01&toDate=2009-08-31&searchOption=DataSet
> ).
> This appears to be  a summary of the number of elements contained in a
> given dataset for a given period interval. This is fine and quite
> handy I guess.
>
> Now, this is where things get tricky..
>
>
> http://dhis.uio.no/demo/dhis-web-maintenance-dataadmin/searchResult.action?searchOption=DataSet&parent=233&periodType=Monthly&toDate=2009-08-31&fromDate=2009-04-01
>
> provides a summary ( I think) of the number of data element values for
> a given data element and period interval, which is also handy.
>
> However, I feel this may be very misleading, because of the name "Data
> browser". We are looking here at the "COUNT" of data element values,
> not the "SUM" and not browsing the actual data values themselves. If
> an untrained eye were to see the results of the URL above, it might be
> very misleading.  I therefore would like to suggest that we come up
> with a new name for the "Data browser", but I do not really know what
> it should be called. I just think that it should be clear that we are
> not actually browsing data, but rather looking at a summary (namely
> the number of data element values) for a particular set of parameters.
>
> Regardless of this, I think having the functionality to simply browse
> raw data itself, without having to go either through a report, or data
> entry form, would be very useful. I was planning to write this up as a
> blueprint, but would appreciate some comments on what I have written
> here first.
>
> Best regards,
> Jason
>
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-- 
Cheers,
Knut Staring