Generating CDISC DEFINE.XML on iPhone

The data definition or DEFINE.XML is a very useful road map to any data transfer and is particularly important in an electronic submission to the FDA. I had worked on a few projects where as we were preparing the DEFFINE.XML, the meta data or attributes of the data was constantly being updated. This can be simple changes like variable labels or more detailed comments describing how a variable is derived. In this case, it is a challenge getting the latest version of the DEFINE.XML to gain a better understand regarding the latest changes. This became the impetus for making the DEFINE.XML available via the iPhone.

The Definedoc was originally a SAS macro that only ran on a SAS server. I then adapted this to be executable on an iPhone. This will allow a user on an iPhone to dynamically execute and get the latest DEFINE.XML upon request and viewable on the go. This means that I can get the view of the latest update that my analyst has worked on at any moment even when I am on the road through my iPhone. I will illustrate how this is done through a video which you can see below.

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