EBME Forums Forums Maintenance Biomed Databases Data transfers from HECS

I have been thinking of that but it is not a one-day affair. Still trying out. Any quick way pls advise.

tks

No, not a one day affair in any way, shape, or form. More like a six-month affair (at minimum)!

I can see that Mr. ECRI won't be happy about suggestions of "re-engineering" his software, but I know that you realise that the real value is in the data itself. And that is your data, no doubt about that. So, if you have (or get hold) of the software tools (ie, an xBase database manager), I see no reason why you need to continue paying for something year in, year out.

After all, ECRI still describes itself as a "not for profit organisation".

We wish to clarify ECRI Institute’s position regarding organisations wishing to export their data from HECS4 to other equipment management systems.

HECS4 For Windows was released in 1995 and was based on a SQLBase back-end database. In late 2006 it was announced that support for HECS would cease from the end of 2008 as ECRI Institute were releasing a new-generation system, ECRI-AIMS. A significant discount on the software cost and free conversion of data from HECS to ECRI-AIMS were provided to customers who upgraded from HECS to ECRI-AIMS prior to the end-of-support date.

HECS was always supplied with an ODBC driver, which provided read-only access to all HECS data. For customers upgrading to a system other than ECRI-AIMS prior to the end of support date, ECRI Institute was happy to provide assistance with exporting data using the ODBC drivers - and did so for several customers. As HECS is now out-of-support, this is unfortunately no longer possible.

It is in violation of the HECS Licence Agreement, as it is with any licensed software, to re-engineer it for any purpose, and I’m sure that no Trust would be happy to be in violation of such an agreement. Having said this, for the reasons stated above, there should be no reason for anyone to need to re-engineer HECS for the simple process of extracting data.

As every customer’s HECS database had the same database structure, a turnkey conversion utility was created for HECS – ECRI-AIMS conversions. In addition, ECRI Institute have now carried out many bespoke conversions to ECRI-AIMS from other systems, and also now have a turnkey conversion utility for SEMS databases too.

If anyone would like any more details on ECRI-AIMS then just get in touch, aims@ecri.org.uk, 01707 831 003 or www.ecri.org.uk.

Thank you for making ECRI's position clear, there, Rob.