carol0801 wrote on Wednesday, August 08, 2012:
I am new to OpenEMR. Where in the available information can I find a high level database layout and field list to understand what the EMR is capturing?
aball65 wrote on Friday, August 10, 2012:
I don’t believe the document you’re looking for exists. MySQL comes with a system database called INFORMATION_SCHEMA for capturing data about the databases within a MySQL database instance. The INFORMATION_SCHEMA contains tables called TABLE and COLUMNS each of which has a column called COMMENTS which could be used to capture OpenEMR table and column descriptions. Unfortunately, the majority of the COMMENTS fields are empty for the OpenEMR database. Populating these fields would give OpenEMR contributors a common understanding of the OpenEMR database which is the foundation of the application. I’d be glad to help populate them but would need input from the OpenEMR experts.
carol0801 wrote on Friday, August 10, 2012:
Thank you for this description. It and the Database table list at http://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/OpenEMR_System_Architecture and the link there to the 3.2.0 schema map have been a good start to my understanding.
deschel wrote on Saturday, August 11, 2012:
If you just want to look at the table names and all of the fields within each table (no schema relationship), you can use PHPMyAdmin to browse the tables. First you need to install OpenEMR, then install PHPMyAdmin.
PHPMyAdmin is very easy to download and install with no more than 10 minutes of time.
PHPMyAdmin is also built in to OpenEMR, but this is a very old version. I recommend that you download the newest version - more features and more you can do. But, to get to the version already embedded in OpenEMR, on the left nav, select Administration -> Other -> Database. You can then see the list of tables, and click on them to see the fields in them. You can also export the sql to a text document if you want to read the structure this way.
David
marka1211 wrote on Tuesday, August 14, 2012:
In Linux, “mysql” is a nice command line interface for exploring the database files. A command like: select * from layout_options where form_id like ‘LBF%’ order by form_id, group_name, seq;
will give you a nice print-out of the elements of you Layout Based Forms, for example.
It does involve learning a little SQL syntax, but a quick Google search on whatever you are trying to do usually brings up several good answers.
carol0801 wrote on Tuesday, August 14, 2012:
Thank you David and Marka !