Re: vendor using oracle 10g database for application, but wants to lock access to data (vendor lock-in)

From: pheonix1t <pheonix1tAThoustonDOTrrDOTcom_at_com.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:48:13 GMT
Message-ID: <1jewe.551$U61.259@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com>

Jim Kennedy wrote:
> "pheonix1t" <pheonix1tAThoustonDOTrrDOTcom_at_com.com> wrote in message
> news:ky3we.436$Ox3.98_at_newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
>

>>what are ways to bypass vendor lock-in on oracle 10g?
>>one site I work at has been a beta testing site for about 2 years for an
>>EMR vendor (electronic medical records).
>>Now, the application is almost finished and I asked about odbc or XML
>>access to the database and we've been told that's a topic we'll have to
>>discuss with sales!
>>they're telling us if we want any interface to other systems, they can
>>build it for us!
>>
>>Is there a polite but clear way to state that it's OUR DATA and we want
>>full access to it by any method oracle supports?
>>
>>Has anyone else seen this?  I feel like they've used the beta sites and
>>now they want to take advantage of them by telling most doctors (who
>>have no idea about rdbms issues, data access, etc) that for a price, the
>>  vendor can make an interface for them!
>>
>>Oskar
>>
>>ps.  I was thinking of getting around them by resetting the system
>>password to the database!  It's on win2k server.  I guess sqlplus from
>>command line should work.  I tried 'connect / as sysdba' and 'connect
>>system as sysdba'.  For system, i get prompted for a password, / gets
>>privilage error or something like that.  I don't know the password!
>>HELP!!
>>
>>I guess I can put a request on metalink for lost system password, that
>>must be pretty common for them (I guess).
>>

>
>
> I worked for an EMR company and they published the schema and tables, and
> relationals for about 95% of the database. The objective was to allow the
> customer to create their own reports on the data etc. The other 5% that was
> not publicly documented was data that didn't deal with the medical data.
> The data wasn't encrypted and the customer could create their own reports
> with an outside reporting tool. (We didn't build our own report writer, we
> used a commercially available reporting package - Crystal Reports in this
> case. If the customer wanted to use a different reporting package for their
> reporting they could; it was not integrated into the application.
>
> That said if the customer wanted to directly update the tables (insert or
> update) that we did not allow. We licensed the Oracle database to the
> customer as a run time license. (so they were not allowed to change the
> schema or directly insert or update data.) If they wanted a lab or other
> interface then we charged them for developing that. (assuming it wasn't a
> standard one, that we had)
>
> So I would say, if you are just Reading the information then you should be
> allowed to do that. Also the company should document the data schema.
> (Hopefully they haven't done stupid things like comma delimited values in a
> column to contain multiple values.) If you want to change the data or
> insert new data then there are a lot of implications for that.
>
> What EMR company?

praxis
www.infor-med.com

>
> I used to work for a company called Medicalogic.(Logician) They went
> bankrupt and GE Medical bought the assets. I don't know if they changed the
> policy when they bought the assets of the company, but I don't think so. It
> was a good product; I suspect it is still a good product. GE wouldn't have
> bothered to buy them if they were going to radically change the product.
> Jim
>
>

thank you very much for the insight!

Oskar Received on Tue Jun 28 2005 - 10:48:13 CDT