The Northwestern Medical Enterprise Data Warehouse (NMEDW) is a Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute (NUCATS) initiative funded jointly by the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (FSM), Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation (NMFF), and Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH). Its mission is to create a single, comprehensive, and integrated repository of all medical data sources on the campus to facilitate operational, patient care, and research reporting. The EDW has been developed completely in-house, with no consulting fees.
Recent Posts
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Using the MERGE Statement in SSIS Via Stored Procedure
Reply(this is a modified version of the article I wrote for SQLServer.com published on 1/23/012, ‘Using the MERGE Statement in SSIS Via A Stored Procedure‘) Background In our Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) within the Northwestern University Biomedical Informatics Center (NUBIC), … Continue reading
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NUBIC’s FedEx Day
NUBIC decided to do a FedEx Day (following the Atlassian model). It’s our first FedEx Day, and we had about 1/3rd of our staff build or collaborate on projects between the NUBIC software development and EDW groups. There was also unanimous … Continue reading
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ETL Assistant – Getting Error Row Description and Column Information Dynamically
SSIS does a fine job at letting you manage “garden path” ETL, but many face the challenge of how to manage row failures. Which row failed? Why did it fail? Error row handling is a central part of any development task and usually winds up representing a significant chunk of your time and code. In this article we’ll step you through how to overcome SSIS’s design-time-only availability of error row information by creating a runtime dynamic error row handler using CozyRoc’s tool kit for SSIS. Continue reading
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ETL Assistant – Using CozyRoc’s Parallel Loop Task
In our continuing series on building your own templates, reusable “point-and-click” ETL solution using CozyRoc’s components for Microsoft SSIS, we’ll be stepping into the “Parallel Loop Task”. Microsoft’s default loop task is serial. If you ever have need to parallelize execution of SSIS tasks, overcoming this can be quite a challenge. With the Parallel Loop Task you can, with a few quick clicks, enable parallel execution of tasks and packages to maximize the utilization of your available resources. Continue reading
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Mr. Can’t-Know-It-All
Okay, let me start by saying that I struggle with the cliché that there are no stupid questions. I say that partly because I do believe there are stupid questions out there, typically asked by people who just don’t get … Continue reading
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Our Journey to Meaningful Use Certification – Part One
The Northwestern Medical Enterprise Data Warehouse received meaningful use certification for both of our Inpatient and Outpatient modules back in June 2011. Since then a lot of people have been contacting me to learn about our certification experience and I … Continue reading
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Our Fundamental Principles of Data Warehousing
I think many data warehousing shops get off on the wrong foot in defining their architecture. When we set out to create the Northwestern Medical Enterprise Data Warehouse, we identified three principles that govern everything we do. These were not … Continue reading
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Vendor Relationships vs Vendor Partnerships
Vendors fall into two buckets: those who strive to make you successful and those who exist solely to sell more wares. Like any project of a decent size, the EDW has a number of vendors that we rely on to … Continue reading
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Introducing ETL Assistant – A Dynamic, Templated Approach to SSIS
Learn how we approached extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) of data using CozyRoc’s tool kit for Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). We’ll step you through the basic concepts, building blocks, and stumbling points of constructing your own “point-and-click” loading between a SQL-based source and destination. Cut down the time you spend building and maintaining SSIS packages so you can get back to “real work” at your data warehouse. Continue reading
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PQRI XML Validator
The PQRI XML Validator web application was built by the EDW team to validate a given XML file against PQRI 2009 specifications. This application was built during our meaningful use certification efforts. The PQRI 2009 specifications are only available in … Continue reading