The Data Wrangling Project

Data wrangling is the process of transforming and mapping data from one "raw" data form into another format with the intent of making it more appropriate and valuable for a variety of downstream purposes such as analytics. The goal of data wrangling is to assure quality and useful data.

Because many communities are looking to develop their own reports, dashboards, and visualizations, ACRE Consulting is now offering tools to help communities utilize their data more easily by providing wrangled datasets.

What is a Dataset?

Data in HIFIS is stored in a variety of tables, sometimes with incomprehensible names and purposes like HIFIS_Services_SP_Programs and HIFIS_Client_ContactEventTypes. While the database is (mostly) documented, it can be quite time-consuming to look up how all of the data is stored, and to make sure it's being properly referenced.

To make your data more usable, special types of tables called views can also be created. Views combine data into preconfigured datasets that correctly connect and cross-reference multiple related pieces of data.

View Diagram
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Improve your security, too!

Besides ease of use, another benefit to creating views can be enhanced security. Some reporting needs are so complex that they normally could not be completed without using a SQL query.

That means that your database administrator would need to grant you, or other people in your community, permission to run SQL queries on your data. That creates the potential for users to access data they shouldn't be able to, or directly modify or even delete data within your database!

By setting up views, you're predefining what data is acceptable to use, and what the limits a user can do with it are (no erasing the database!). This can allow your database administrator to set more restrictive server permissions.

Microsoft Power BI

Does your community use Power BI? Views make dashboard development in Power BI much easier.

Views can also be used in Tableau and other reporting tools too!

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