{nule.org}

I update HL7 Comm 0.8 again. It is now feature complete for the 0.8 release. The last remaining logic agent allows you to run the beanshell scripts you create using the interactive beanshell agent without a GUI editor window or without a GUI at all. To use this, use the BshLogicAgentInteractive client to create your beanshell script, then save it after you have it working correctly. After that, use the BshLogicAgentFromFile client to run your script in a non-interactive fashion. One change to that last version is if you had a config file saved for the old logic agent, you should rename it in the config from “BshLogicAgent” to “BshLogicAgentInteractive”. I decided to change some names around to make the Integrate Client Library classes make a bit more sense.

There are a few more bugs, mostly related to the GUI, in 0.8 that need fixed; but the underlying logic seems solid. Once I fix the bugs and update the documentation 0.8 is done. Feel free to try out 0.8 as a “release candidate” at this point and give me feedback. I still think the new features are pretty killer for this kind of app.

There’s also an interesting bug that comes to light recently that causes the Light HL7 Library to overflow the stack on windows and linux versions of Java. (It’s not re-creatable on OS X.) I’ve created a work around, where extremely large HL7 messages of 70+ kilobytes in size and 900+ segments in length can be parsed on these systems. I don’t know that Sun will address the stack overflow directly, so I figured I need to work around it anyway, plus not everybody can install the latest JVM. So far HL7 Anon has the newest Light HL7 Library included, as does the latest HL7 Comm beta. I’ll release a new HL7 Browser pretty soon to fix that and some other usability issues.

As always, send me feedback or comments.

Thanks to Jack Jones for an update to HL7 Diff that allows it to run without a graphical display. You can get his version of the program here.

Also, I fixed some potential bugs in the beta HL7 Comm release. I did find that the batch mode doesn’t work quite like I’d like, and I’m not sure it’s a 0.8 only bug, so that’ll be fixed before another major release. I also added a position display to the new beanshell editor. That way if you get an error from your code you can tell from your cursor what line you’re editing.

In site news, the contact me page has a form (finally) that you can fill in to email me. Use that or the BBS if you have questions on the new code.

It’s kind of weird to think about concrete things on our lives that we’re actually proud of. Yeah, graduating high-school with honors, or college at all are impressive; getting published, starting a family, etc. All good stuff. I’m not sure what to think of the fact that I’m starting to think of the HL7 Comm software as being one of my great accomplishments.

The thing about the Comm software is that it scratches a number of the great geek itches I’ve had for integration software. There are two huge features in 0.8 that makes it, at least for a power user like myself, pretty much the ultimate utility for HL7 integration. (I’m a user of it myself, you know, it’s not made in a vacuum, so I feel obliged to review my own software just like I’d review anybody elses.) First the manual ack/nack utility is great for fairly obvious reasons. Nothing else out there can really let the integrator create responses with the diversity that a remote system may. This may not manage to include a variety of network problems (nothing by iptables really can), but feel free to ACK/NACK or idle away, and make your responses look just as ridiculous as those we get from these systems that we connect to.

Next is something that I’m really excited about. In my own mind this fulfills the promise of two pieces of software I’ve written that haven’t been utilized by the masses out there to the extent they could be. In this release I include beanshell support within HL7 Comm. You can write your own scripts and do whatever you’d like to the data that you process. Here’s what it looks like:

You can even use beanshell to write your own interfaces to HL7 Comm:

It comes with a number of sample scripts to get you started, but the possibilities are endless (I can say without hyperbole for once). How often have you had to massage data to get it into an EMR? Here you can do intelligent bulk edits on data using something that actually understands HL7. You can run the data through it inline as a proxy or as a pre or post processor to format data as you require without additional expensive software. (Send me your sample scripts too! Other users would love to see them.)

I’m really happy with what you can do here. The only things left for 0.8 are to update the documentation and to create a non-GUI logic client for the beanshell scripts. That will let you run your scripts in a headless manner. Probably about a week until that happens, but until then, I give the 0.8 release my stamp of approval. The clients are rock solid as always, and the new functionality is icing on the cake.

Enjoy!

More cool stuff is coming for a 0.9 and a 1.0 release. Let me know what you think – this is your software too! Also I want to know if the users of this software want an official nule.org mailing list for it. Do you want to know when new versions come out? Do you want to discuss with others best practices for integration?

I’ve put some of my thoughts about the upcoming NetBeans 6.1 in the review section. Take a look at it here: http://nule.org/wp/?page_id=183.

The HL7 Comm is still nearing release. I can’t wait to spill the beans (so to speak) on the new beanshell functionality.