Could Someone Give me Guidance on Integrating ODK-X with External Databases?

Support
1

Hello there, :wave:

I am working on a project where I need to integrate ODK-X with an external database, and I am looking for some guidance or advice from the community. Specifically; I am trying to figure out the best way to connect ODK-X applications, such as Collect or Tables, with a remote SQL database, so that data collected through ODK-X can be automatically synced and stored in an external system for further processing.

What is the most efficient way to establish a connection between ODK-X and an external SQL database? Are there any recommended tools or methods for setting this up?

Once the connection is established, how can I set up a process to sync data between ODK-X and the external database in real-time or in periodic intervals?

Are there any security concerns or best practices I should be aware of when transmitting data between ODK-X and an external database; especially regarding sensitive or personal information?

Also, I have gone through this post; https://forum.odk-x.org/t/struggling-with-customizing-forms-in-odk-x- which definitely helped me out a lot

If anyone has experience with this setup, could you share some common issues or errors you have encountered during the integration process, and how you resolved them?

Thank you in advance for your help and assistance. :innocent:

2

Hello,

There are multiple ways of achieving this, depending on your setup…

  • you could run a backup job on your sync endpoint that exports a backup of the postgresql db and imports it into your external db (provided it is accessible from the sync endpoint)
  • or you could have a batch job that uses suitcase to download from the sync endpoint and export to .csv files
  • or you could try out the new R package rockx and export the data using an R script run by a scheduled task on your target machine (from R you can easily convert the data into other formats or export it to an external SQL database)

I hope one of those methods will work for you?

//emil