ClearCore provides a cross reference to all known instances of a specific person across all involved data sources. By knowing a person’s id in one data source it is possible to obtain a cross reference list from ClearCore that gives the id of that person in any other data sources where they have been found, as well as the ClearCore Best View data.

When a DSD is set up in fData in order to obtain data across multiple sources for the same person, the ClearCore cross reference can be used to allow fData to find the appropriate records. The Best View can be used to find basic demographic data about the person, regardless of which data sources they can be found.

A data plugin has been created to provide access to ClearCore from within fData data groups. This following explains how to use the ClearCore plugin when creating DSDs (Data Set Definitions) to obtain data across data sources.

How It Works

A DSD might have the following data groups:

1. Name and address from Clear Core Best View
2. Activities from case management
3. Exclusions from education system
4. Incidents from youth offending system

This example could then be used to gather data about a child’s history to be output as a document. That document could then be made available from any of the source systems (case management, education, or youth offending) so that users of each of these systems could each get the same history of the child.

In order to make the document available from all systems, the DSD needs to be able to take user entries (passed parameters) that specify where they are linking from and the person’s id in that system. This information can then be used to obtain from ClearCore a list of the person’s id (or ids) in all available sources. This is done by adding a data group before all of the others that uses the fSeries ClearCore plugin to get the person’s ids.

As each of the above data groups is executed in turn, they refer to the ClearCore id list to obtain the person’s id (or ids) from the corresponding data source.

Data Group Types

The fSeries ClearCore plugin takes care of connecting fData and ClearCore via the ClearCore API in order to get information required in fDocs or fPanels. There are three different data group types available.

ClearCore

The main type returns details of occurrences of the specified person in all the data sources available. There are two options which return different types of details.

Ids

This option provides a field for each data source, containing a comma separated list of all ids found for the person within that data source:

The ClearCore field contains the USN that uniquely identifies the person in ClearCore.

Cross References

This option returns a list of occurrences of the specified person in all the data sources available, sometimes returning more than one instance for a source:

The ClearCore field contains the USN that uniquely identifies the person in ClearCore.

ClearCoreBestView

Returns a record including all fields in the ClearCore Best View for a given person, specified by their unique ClearCode identity (USN).

This makes the ClearCore Best View data available as a source, in the same way as any other available data source may be used.

ClearCoreDatasets

Returns a list of available data sources within ClearCore.

This is used within the ClearCoreDatasets DSD which is provided for use in user entry lookups.

Creating a DSD

The fSeries ClearCore plugin provides the means to create DSDs that gather data from across the data sources available regardless of how the DSD is approached by the user.

For example, an fDocs document may be linked to from any source (such as case management or education) providing only the name of the source and the person’s identity within that source.  By passing those values to the XRefs or Ids options, the plugin will return the identity of the user in all sources in which ClearCore has identified a matching person.

User Entries

The DSD should have at least the following user entries:

This makes it possible to integrate with all source systems by passing, for example:

http://…/fDSelect.aspx?…&Dataset=DS_CRM&Id=xxx

Where xxx is substituted with the person’s id in the DS_CRM system.

ClearCore Data Group

For the DSD to gather data from any data source based on the above user entries, it must include a data group to get the person’s id in each source. This must be included before any data groups that need to use the ids.

Use the Ids return option to obtain a single record whose fields are named the same as each data source in which the person is found. The field’s value is a comma separated list of all corresponding ids in the data source (there may be more than one matched person in a particular data source). In addition a field named “ClearCore” holds the ClearCore USN for the person.

Placeholders

Each data group which is to obtain results from a data source requires a placeholder to insert the person’s id for the corresponding data source within data group settings such as a SQL query. Use a Global Placeholder for each source. These may then be used by each data group that follows the ClearCore data group described above.

Each Global Placeholder should be a non-field type with a data conversion:

=RAWVALUE(Source,ClearCore)

Where Source is the name of the data source, such as DS_CRM, or ClearCore to get the person’s ClearCore USN. ClearCore is the id of the data group described above that gets the ids.

Use the RawValue function in case the id is a number, in order to prevent fSeries automatically formatting the value with commas.

This function may also be used to test whether a data group should be executed (the data group “if” option):

=IFNOT(=RAWVALUE(Source,Ids),)

This will return true only if there is a least one record matching the person in the specified source.

The ClearCore plugin and data group types are an optional feature and are supplied by Fibonacci Ltd.

Setup and Installation

Data gathering plugin: ClearCore.dll.

The fAdmin data gathering plugin definition has an id of ClearCore, uses the ClearCore class and the LoadBestView, LoadDataSets, LoadIds and LoadXRefs load methods.

There are three  fAdmin data group types: ClearCore, ClearCoreBestView and ClearCoreDatasets. Each has an an internal type of “plugin” and has an editor with the same id as the type.

The ClearCore.xml fAdmin plugin settings configuration file is required for this data group type.

The following fAdmin settings are available:

fData: Uses the ClearCore, ClearCoreBestView and ClearCoreDatasets controls in ClearCoreControls.dll.

The server’s machine.config must have the corresponding configuration sections added from the ClearCorefDocs.config file, replacing the specified endpoints as appropriate.

The machine.config file is located in the appropriate Microsoft .Net framework’s Config folder within the Windows directory.