Database Integration Question

[Dan]

Hello all.

I am currently working on a project for several Hospitals. The
application is written in Java, and the database is either Oracle or
MySql, depending on the client. For a while now, we have been asked
to integrate our appliations database with the databases of the other
Hospital applicatoins, such as payroll, scheduling and so on. I have
been looking around online to see how others have done this, and I
have come up with two standards, the HL7 standard and DICOM standard.

Now, lets look at this on a slightly higher level than this. Even
conforming to these standards, we would still need to establish some
sort of communication between ourselves and whichever application we
wish to integrate our database with, correct? How does database
integration work in the real world? Standards are great, and I am
sure that they help a great deal when it comes down to it, but the
fact is that there are hundreds of applications we need to integrate
with across various clients and it seems like it would take a lifetime
to do one at a time. So, is there an easier way? Are there any good
vendors that do this? I have found some vendors, but picking one can
be detremental to my career if they are no good. How have others
tackled this problem?

Thanks in advance
Dan

 

[Roedy Green]

I
have come up with two standards, the HL7 standard and DICOM standard.

There are two different problems : exchanging information with other
groups and maintaining your database in a way that makes that easy.

You exchange data in standard formats that have nothing to do with
SQL.

You are going to need to write import/exports for the HL7 and DICOM
standards. To make life easy you might want to do that before/while
you design your SQL database to ensure that is not difficult.

 

[Daniel Morgan]

There are two different problems : exchanging information with other
groups and maintaining your database in a way that makes that easy.

You exchange data in standard formats that have nothing to do with
SQL.

You are going to need to write import/exports for the HL7 and DICOM
standards. To make life easy you might want to do that before/while
you design your SQL database to ensure that is not difficult.

I agree. Also check with medbiquitous.org. They are a standards group
for the medical world and are
involved in drafting a number of XML standards for information exchange.

I'm not that familiar iwth DICOM but I can tell you that the more you
know about HL7 the more you
may wish you had taken larger doses of drugs when you were in school.
Hopefully HL7 will soon be
replaced by XML or something containing something a bit closer to sanity.

--
Daniel Morgan
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/oad/oad_crs.asp
http://www.outreach.washington.edu/ext/certificates/aoa/aoa_crs.asp
(e-mail address removed)
(replace 'x' with a 'u' to reply)

 

[Wojtek]

Hello all.

I am currently working on a project for several Hospitals. The
application is written in Java, and the database is either Oracle or
MySql, depending on the client. For a while now, we have been asked
to integrate our appliations database with the databases of the other
Hospital applicatoins, such as payroll, scheduling and so on. I have
been looking around online to see how others have done this, and I
have come up with two standards, the HL7 standard and DICOM standard.

There are some Java class generators which will take the HL7 subset
you want and create a series of classes which will parse the HL7
message and return it in a tree form. You walk the tree to get the
information in the HL7 message.

Try a Google search for "java HL7 generator class"

 

[KevJohnP]

Hi Dan

Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) is a whole area in its own
right and I am far from an expert. But I have had to support a few
applications and technologies from this area (IBM MQ Series Integrator
and Oracle InterConnect) and they all seem to work in a similar way.

To prevent a transactional nightmare and to keep the systems
loosely-coupled they all use some means of asynchronous messaging (eg
Oracle AQ) to pass messages between the systems with the common payload
of the message being XML.

MQSI and Oracle InterConnect have this hub and spoke architecture with
the idea that you have a business view 'model' and that you write
adapters for a given system to generate / receive data according to the
model. The benefit of this is meant to be that any new integration
only involves you writing an adapter for the new system in order for it
to be able to communicate with any other system on the hub.

I have seen this work successfully in the Legal, Telecoms and Banking
world. But it is one of those front-loaded projects, so if you only
have a few integrations may not be worth the effort.

Using XML and async messaging is probably worth the effort whatever the
scale of the project. This technologies are also well suited to Java.

HTH

KJP