palCentre is the software for entering and managing data relating to PCOC (Palliative Care Outcomes Collaboration). PCOC is a national palliative care outcomes and benchmarking program. PCOC’s primary objective is to systematically improve patient outcomes (including pain and symptom control). For more information on the dataset collected please see the PCOC data dictionary. For more information on how the data is used, please see the PCOC data policy.
The palCentre software is replacing SNAPshot which is the original software used for PCOC data entry.
Supported database platform
palCentre uses the industry standard database server SQL Server, and supports versions of SQL Server and SQL Server Express from 2008 through to 2016 (This software is not included with palCentre).
For small installations or where your facility has limited IT resources, using a SQL Compact Edition database may be the best database solution. PCOC will preconfigure the database and send to your service. You can save the SQL Compact Edition database on a shared drive that all users have access to.
Requirement: SQL Port 1433 Open
palCentre requires that all client machines running the client application are able to communicate directly with the database server. This means the SQL Server port (1433) must be available between the database server and the computers running the palCentre client.
Requirement: SQL Server configured to allow SQL Login Authentication
palCentre also requires that your SQL Server is configured to allow SQL Logins (as opposed to Windows Authentication). Mixed mode authentication will also work, but palCentre uses SQL Logins to connect to the server.
Creating and configuring the palCentre Database
palCentre has a built-in database configuration wizard for creating and configuring the palCentre database in order to streamline the installation process. The installation package also includes the SQL Scripts for creating the database, SQL Server logins, tables and structural table data which you can modify and run manually if you prefer.
By far the simplest approach is to use the configuration wizard which allows you to specify your own SQL database name, SQL logins and passwords and an encryption key specific to your facility. This ensures that the configuration of the database at your site will be able to comply with your own naming standards and password security policies. The configuration wizard takes less than 10 minutes run, including data entry time. This process is described later under the section setting up the SQL database.
Database and Settings Security
SQL Logins
As already mentioned palCentre uses SQL Logins to authenticate to the database. It requires 3 logins to exist, and they are created and mapped to database users in the palCentre database by the configuration wizard. The next table describes the logins, their purpose and the user roles which use them (user roles are explained in the next section – Application Level Security)
Login Name | Example | SQL Server Database Roles | User Roles (Application) |
{prefix}_dbo | palCentre_dbo | dbo | Administrator |
{prefix}_user | palCentre_user | db_datareader db_datawriter | Manager User |
{prefix}_reader | palCentre_reader | db_datareader | Reader |
The purpose of having different levels of users access the database with different SQL Logins is to add security. It makes it literally impossible for a user logged in with the Application Role of ‘Reader’ to alter data, and ensures that only a user logged with the Application Role of ‘Administrator’ could ever make changes to database structure. It also means that from the outset, the business engine of palCentre is designed to be able to be used safely by both a Windows Application and potentially in the future, a web application.
Encryption
All data in palCentre is encrypted in the database. Additionally user passwords are encrypted in the database, meaning it is safe for users to use a password that they use for other systems.
As part of the palCentre configuration wizard, each client is asked for an encryption key. This encryption key is used for all database encryption. Every client at a facility must be configured with the same encryption key so that they can encrypt and decrypt the data in a common fashion. The benefit of having a unique encryption key for each facility is that it makes the identifiable data in the database completely un-decryptable to anyone who doesn’t have this key.
palCentre stores connection information for client machines in a local settings file. This file stores the database server name, SQL Login names, SQL Logins passwords and the encryption key. The security-critical items in this file (SQL passwords and the encryption key itself) are encrypted with a constant encryption key. This means that people with access to the file system on client machines will not have access to SQL Login passwords or the ‘identifiable data encryption key’.
Installing and Configuring palCentre
Installation of palCentre is intended to be simple and safe. The built in database configuration wizard can create and configure the SQL database and logins for you with a bare minimum of customisable data entry. Once the database configuration wizard has been run once, the client configuration wizard can be run to connect a client machine to the palCentre database. Alternatively, the configuration wizards create a configuration file which can be deployed to client machines, eliminating the need for running the client configuration wizard.
Pre-requisites
palCentre uses the .NET Extended Framework v4. Past testing indicates that most Windows XP and 7 machines do not have this framework pre-installed.
For reporting, palCentre uses the Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 runtime. Crystal Reports requires that the Visual C++ 2005 SP1 32-bit Runtime and the ATL Security Update for Visual C++ 2005 have been installed.
If preferred, prerequisites should be able to be deployed automatically as there are no configuration steps required by them. Some of the prerequisites may already be installed on the client machine and if so, the installer will inform you of this and you can move on to the next step. Depending on which prerequisites are required, and the speed of the client machine this procedure should take between 5 and 15 minutes per client machine.
Note that palCentre is a 32 bit application, as are all pre-requisites. This decision was made to allow support for older Windows XP machines. palCentre and its dependencies have been specifically tested on Windows XP (32 and 64 bit), Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit), Windows 8 (64 bit), and Windows 10 (64 bit).