Exporting Data

Profiles are used as the primary vehicle to export data from the TESite database to a wide variety of target formats. TEAIM will support the extraction to external databases or to external files. TEAIM profiles are used as a method to communicate to the TEAIM engine the required client-specific information needed to uniquely identify and execute a data export. When a profile is created, the profile is assigned a unique system-generated Profile ID. As stated earlier, each profile type has a predefined set of attributes that pass parameters to the TEAIM engine. Each profile attribute can be uniquely identified based on a classification that is composed of a Profile ID, Section, and Key ID. Sections group the profile attributes according to their general functionality. For each section, there may be more than one Key ID assigned. The Key ID defines the attributes most basic characteristics: value, data type, whether it is required, etc. The two profile types that export data out of DATABASICS are the TIMESHEET EXTRACT and EXPENSE EXTRACT. Each profile type will be described below.

The TEAIM exporting functionality moves data from the TESite database and into a temporary table called TEAIM_TM_EXTRACT (for timesheet extracts) and TEAIM_XP_EXTRACT (for expense report extracts). The data that is extracted to this file is for the most part standard with the exception of a few non-standard items that will be discussed below. The flexibility of TEAIM to extract to a wide variety of formats is through the use of a pre-installed database function called an extract event (SP_TM_EXTRACT_EVENT for timesheet extracts and SP_XP_EXTRACT_EVENT for expense extracts). This event is called at the end of a processing batch to put the data into the client-specified format. This customizable event will allow the Administrator to combine any subset of information from the temporary extract table with any other information from other external data sources into a specified format - either into a database table or a data file. All this is performed in TEAIM through the use of the customized events and proper TEAIM configuration.

TEAIM has the ability to export to multiple systems through the use of batch types. For more information, refer to the section titled Batch Type.