Techniques that Make a Difference
Many of our clients come to us with similar problems. They have poorly written
CCL scripts that consume a large quantity of system resources
and are extremely difficult to maintain. When asked for an explanation, their programmers tell them that
CCL is the reason for missed deadlines, messy code
and reports that impact system performance.
The problem is not CCL.
CCL is an excellent tool for writing reports and
extracts in Cerner. The problem is that most CCL programmers
have not learned the techniques needed to use CCL properly.
John Simpson, founder of Precision Healthcare Solutions developed a series of simple to learn techniques
a few months into his CCL career. These techniques were developed
when John was exposed to the typical poorly written CCL reports
seen throughout most Cerner hospitals. Initial application of his techniques improved the performance of
existing reports by an average of 500%. Reports that took minutes ran in seconds.
In addition to incredible performance improvements, John's techniques simplified the
CCL source code in a way that made future maintenance
extremely easy and quick.
Over the past ten years, John has applied his techniques to every CCL project he has worked on. The
results have been very successful. All of Precision Healthcare Solutions Systems Analysts have been fully trained in John's
techniques and use them daily to produce highly optimized maintainable reports.
Recently John was given the challenge of re-writing one of the poorest performing reports he had ever
encountered. Originally developed by Cerner, this report contained over 14,000 lines of code and
executed in 28 hours. The new version was reduced to just over 1,400 lines of code and runs in ten minutes.
All CCL Programs Should...
- Meet all of the business needs defined in the report specification
- Perform as optimially as possible to ensure low system resource usage and quick execution times.
- Be coded in a way that promotes easy future maintenance by other programmers.
If your CCL reports take a long time to run, are not used by
end users and take your programmers long periods of time to make even the simplest modifications, chances are
some or all of the points listed above are not being met.
Our team are experts in CCL and the Cerner data model who
understand the challenges that come with every report request. We guarantee that all of the points listed above
are dealt with appropriately to ensure you have the highest quality CCL
reports possible.
Meeting Business Needs
Reports are developed for a specific reason or business need. This is where meeting a business need
starts. A report has to present the information an end user needs to perform their job.
However, completely meeting the business need involves much more than just presenting data to an
end user. Ensuring that the data is presented in a manner that is intuitive to the end user workflow
is a critical step in meeting a business need. Our team has years of experience in ensuring that
a CCL report is designed to present data in a way that
will integrate with the workflow of your staff.
If a report is difficult to use or read, many users will typically stay with the manual process they used
before the report was developed. Your CCL reports need be
developed with the goal of making the job easier than the manual process. We can help you design reports
that people will use.
Report Performance
Poor performing CCL reports have an impact on everyone. From
an end user view, a poor performing report delays a user from doing their job. If a report takes a long time
to execute, an end user may decide not to use that report or will have long delays in being able to do their
work. In many cases, a poor performing report can lock down a users computer until the job has finished.
From an IT perspective, a poor performing report results in high system resource usage which in turn
affects overall system performance and finally results in increase IT costs (staffing and hardware upgrades).
To Management, poor performing CCL reports result in lost
productivity and higher costs for the organization. Indirectly, optimized CCL
reports save money.
The techniques we have developed for writing CCL scripts
vastly improve the overall performance of Cerner Reporting. With average improvements of 500% reports
that take hours are dropped to minutes, and those that took minutes run in seconds. These improvements in
report performance contribute to lower system resource usage and less time lost by employees waiting for
output. The end result is that your organization saves on time and money.
Future Maintenance
Almost every report eventually needs to be modified in some way. Either Cerner changes the way data is
stored in the system, or end user business needs change. Regardless for the reason for report modifications,
it is critical that reports be designed in such a way that future modifications are as simple to make
as possible.
Our coding techniques ensure that future modifications are as painless as possible. Our modular code
design makes it possible to add new functionality or change existing functionality with minimum impact on
the existing report. The result is less man hours spent on making changes and a reduction in the costs of
making those changes.