Distribution of Corporate Codes

Why use Common Codes?

It is vital to the ministry that information be shared across headquarters, region and district boundaries as well as across program areas. In order to do this, data must be consistent and there must be a common understanding of what the data means. In other words, there must be a single definition which is published and understood.

Codes are used throughout the ministry as a way of attaching some consistent meaning to data. We generally use codes to shorten the amount of writing we have to do while entering data. It is important to standardize the use of codes so that different offices use the codes in the same way. If the program areas don't use codes in the same way, the same code could be used to describe different things or different codes could be used to describe the same thing. The end result is confusion.

Corporate Codes on the VM

The Data Administration (DA) group in ISB established corporate code tables as a means of storing and managing ministry codes and making their definitions available throughout the ministry. Program areas doing new application development are encouraged to re-use existing codes rather than re-inventing the wheel and creating multiple meanings for the same data.

The corporate code tables (e.g. Code_List_Table and Code_Subset_Tbl) currently reside centrally, on the VM platform. Changes to the standard code tables are loaded in all database environments on the VM. This effectively ensures that there is only one master repository for ministry standard codes.

Accessing Codes on the Oracle Platform

The emergence of Oracle as a new client/server offering in the ministry warrants a quick update on where corporate codes fit into the scheme of things. Corporate code distribution is managed through a replication function between SQL/DS and Oracle. The corporate code tables (Code_List_Table, Code_Subset_Tbl, Code_Xref_Table, Organizational_Unit and Location) are copied to Oracle nightly.

Accessing Codes on the LAN

Standard code tables are also required on other platforms such as the Oracle and ministry LAN (e.g. MS-Access, Foxpro) environments. MS-Access is widely used in the ministry as a reporting database tool and application development environment for small, localized systems. The use of standard codes for MS-Access applications is critical, and is being addressed by the DA Group.

The majority of MS-Access applications in the ministry are part of the Information Access (IAC) initiative. The IAC initiative currently comprises the Timber (TIA) and Silviculture (SIA) reporting databases. These are essentially denormalized reporting databases which are extracted and transformed from their VM data source (e.g. FTAS, CLM, ISIS, MLSIS), and delivered to district LANs where they may be queried by staff.

An IAC database has been created which contains Code_List_Table, Code_Subset_Tbl, Code_Xref_Table, Organizational_Unit, and Location code tables. The database is distributed to a common directory location on all ministry LANs.