Frontend and backends
Last updated
Last updated
The 3di system separates recorded data from the interviewing forms and reporting tools. The frontend provides the interview and reporting features: it’s the bit you see when you start up the 3di. Patient data are recorded in a backend. There can be any number of backends – of which just one can be loaded at a time. However, any number of cases may be stored in a single backend. You do not need to create a new backend for each child, and indeed most users will only ever need to create a single backend to contain all cases.
The separation of frontend and backends has three important advantages:
you can use separate backends for disparate sets of data (for the subjects in different studies, for example)
you can benefit from software upgrades which add or improve retrieval and recording features simply by using a new frontend with your existing backends
backends can be stored in a designated location, perhaps on a separate drive, to comply with institutional policies regarding backup and patient data security
The selection and creation of backends are launched from the Main Menu.
You will create a backend as part of your training course, and in many cases you won't need to think about backends again.
A complete 3di installation has the following folder organisation:
Do not:
delete, move or rename any provided folders immediately inside your 3di5 installation folder (you can create others)
make any changes inside the Resources folder
create folders immediately inside the Backends folder
delete, move or rename the Cases folder within a backend, or any of the numbered case folders within (but you can modify or delete generated Word reports)
The 3di application file or frontend sits at the top level – that is, inside the 3di folder and alongside the folders Backends, PreEntry, Reference, ResearchPapers, Resources, Tools and Spss.
All the files and folders alongside the Backends folder relate to the frontend.
The Backends folder in the installation folder is known as the backend source – a folder containing one or more subfolders, one per backend. This is likely to be the the only backend source you will ever use. However any folder, for example on a removable drive, can be a backend source. This is described in the main menu page.
For each of your backends (and you may never need more than the provided Training5 backend and a backend you create for your own clinical cases), there is in the backends source a folder bearing the backend’s name which stores:
the backend (data) file (which has a systematically related name: if a backend folder is called xyz, then it contains a backend data file called 3di2_xyz_be)
a Cases folder containing all the output documents generated for each patient.
Output documents are themselves organised into folders with 6-digit names based on each patient’s system-assigned Case_ID. Thus the folder 000080 stores all output documents relating to patient 80. A patient’s Case_ID appears at the top-right of the 3di Case Manager.
There is no need to navigate your file system to find a patient’s output documents: the Case Manager provides a Go to documents button which opens a window displaying the relevant folder.
After installing the 3di you might link the frontend to the Training5 backend, or ask the system to create and link to a new backend.
You can create a backend in the provided Backends folder or elsewhere on your hard discs or removable drives (such as USB pen drives). If you choose one of these alternate locations, the 3di will generate a Backends source folder to contain your new backend and any further backends you subsequently create there.
Close the 3di before attempting to move a backend
It is possible to move or copy a backend from one Backends folder to another Backends folder by using Windows Explorer to drag the backend subfolder from one Backends folder to the other. Because all patient reports generated by the 3di are stored in subfolders of a backend folder, moving or copying a backend subfolder moves or copies those reports also.
Remember that if you drag a backend folder from one folder to another on the same storage device (hard disc, USB key, or whatever) you will move rather than copy the backend – unless you drag with the right mouse button, when a menu will pop‑up on button release allowing you to choose Copy here rather than Move here.
Other than for backup purposes, it is not a good idea to copy a backend. There is a risk that some new patients will be added to one backend, and other new cases to the copy – and then there will be two backends with the same name but different content. Another risk, with even worse consequences, is that data relating to a patient who was in the backend at the time of copying may be edited in either the original or the copy – there are then two “versions” of the same case!
