Empower 3 Reports- whats the difference between "Sign Off ID" and "Sign Off Method ID"?
I need to add a Sign Off table to an Empower 3 report which contains all relevant details. I use Summary by All reports. I understand the main fields like Sign Off Full Name, Reason, Method Version etc. But two fields I don't really grasp- "Sign Off ID" is usually the same number for a group of results signed off by the one summary report. For example, I need to sign off 50 results- 10 results using my System Suit report which generates a unique Sign off ID, the other 40 results using my Samples report, which generates a different Sign off ID. Does the Sign Off ID value identify the ID used to identify a certain number of results, and if I were using an individual report, this ID would be different for each result? That's my guess as to its function, since it seems to increment and change only when a different report method is used to sign off a set of results?
The second field is Sign Off Method ID- this one I don't understand. Taking my previous example of 50 results. the first 10 results gave a Sign Off Method ID of 12564 and the remaining 40 results gave a Sign Off Method ID of 7778, so not even sequential! I presumed Oracle always incremented all IDs as activity occurs in each project in Empower 3. Note that Sign Off Method ID is not the same as method version- the version number of the report used to perform sign off. Anyone have any insight into Sign Off Method ID? Thanks for reading.
Best Answer
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Sign Off ID points to a specific instance of something having been signed off, Sign Off Method ID points to a specific report method used to sign off.
EVERYTHING in Empower that can change or be changed has an ID number associated with it. Every version of every thing within a project has a unique ID number for that type of object. In the Pro interface, just right click and choose View All Columns to see the IDs in any tab.
A Sign Off ID ties a result to any existing specific result, processing method, channel, report method, sample set method, method set, named user license of the person executing the sign off, and probably several other behind the scenes things I've neglected. Having a sign off ID is the ultimate tool for tracing the exact things that go into making a given result, because you can use the "view as" option a few times to get to anything that had a hand in making it.
When you use two different report methods to sign off on a result set, you get 2 sign off IDs. The only reason a sign off ID can apply to multiple results is that they were signed off as part of the same result set. These results can still be readily differentiated by result ID, so no "DB foul" has occurred.
If there are no changes in a report method used for sign off, and a result is signed off multiple times, you'll get a new Sign Off ID for each, but the Sign Off Method ID will be unchanged.
In Empower, things frequently appear to get "non-sequential" because of versioning that happens behind the scenes. For example, you have a sample set where standards are processed normally and samples are quantitated at the end. Standard Curve IDs are going to be out of whack because you get a new curve ID after every standard injection. Only the last one is used if you're using an average of all standards. Sample result IDs are likely sequential even though they were not necessarily injected sequentially (due to intervening standards, unprocessed blanks etc.).0
Answers
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Thanks Dan, that certainly answered my question and was very comprehensive. I looked into my report method and I see what you mean about using 2 different report methods and even so, each result has its own ID.
The reason my values were not in sequence was the way my sample set was set up, and the fact that a previous calibrate was used to quantitate the new data so not all the data was in a logical 1,2,3 etc order. Thanks again!
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