Migrating a Well-Established Longitudinal Cohort Database From Oracle SQL to Research Electronic Data Entry (REDCap): Data Management Research and Design Study.

By combining different software tools-Oracle SQL, R, and REDCap-and building a systematic pipeline for data cleaning, formatting, and comparing, we were able to migrate a multicenter longitudinal cohort study from Oracle SQL to REDCap. REDCap offers a flexible way for developing customized study designs, even in the case of longitudinal studies with different study arms (ie, obstetric events, women, and mother-child pairs). However, REDCap does not offer built-in tools for preprocessing large data sets before data import. Additional software is needed (eg, R) for data formatting and cleaning to achieve the predefined REDCap data structure.