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  • Created by Unknown User (wayne.chan@umassmed.edu), last modified on Feb 29, 2012
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This page contains all the caveats and the known workarounds that we are aware of.  Please read through each one to determine if any applies to your particular environment.  Thanks.

Researcher's Guide 

We have provided a Guide for this plugin to the researchers in University of Massachusetts Medical School. We welcome anyone who may find it useful to the researchers in their own institutions as well.

Large Patient Set and Long Run Time

Please note that large patient sets (> 5000) may result in rather long run time before the data can be retrieved from the database and the resulting table can be rendered.  This is especially true when using the Safari browser. 

Ignore Excel Warning Dialog

When opening the resulting exported Excel file, a dialog similar to the following may be displayed:
Simply click [Yes] to proceed.

Different Browser Type may Exhibit Different Excel Spreadsheet Exportation Behaviors

In our development and testing efforts, we've noticed that when the data is exported to the Excel spreadsheet, the behaviors vary among the 4 different browser types (Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Safari). These differences are not anything that can be controlled through our codes (at least not anything we're aware of, though we'll be grateful if any one can suggest any specific workable improvements).

For instance, the following excerpt is from Yves Thorrez (Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel) on the bahaviors of IE:

"However, what's still annoying is that in IE, ... a new tab is opened with an empty page...

 When I go back to the i2b2 tab, there is an IE popup asking to open or save the file, so that's ok."

php.ini Setting and Resulting Exported Excel Spreadsheet File

Gregory Schulte (Children's Hospital Colorado) has alerted us that if the "short_open_tag" in the php.ini file of a server (of this web client plugin) is NOT set to* "on*", then the resulting exported Excel spreadsheet may be just a blank file.

He also suggested the following alternatives as workaround options (for those who have encountered this "blank file" problem, else one need not do anything):

  • either change the "short_open_tag" in the php.ini file
          to 
                     short_open_tag = On
  • or change line 15 of the SaveToExcel.php file,
          from 
                     <body><?=$_REQUEST['datatodisplay']?>
          to 
                     <body><?php echo $_REQUEST['datatodisplay']?>
     
     
    Of these, we recommend updating the php.ini file.
    BTW, after either change, as Yves Thorrez (Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel) reminded us, one must clear the browser cache (close & restart browser session) to ensure the change takes effect.
     
    Incidentally, we determined that this caveat exists for v1.0-2.0 of this web client plugin.
     
    We do hope to have an updated SaveToExcel.php file (that takes care of this caveat without requiring the deployers to update their php.ini files) included in the next release of this web client plugin.
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