Coordinated Changes to Various HL7 Development Tools

On June 18, a set of changes was released for several HL7 development tools. These were "coordinated" in the sense that capabilities added to RoseTree? required or enabled concomitant changes in other tools. The primary impetus behind these changes is the continuing objective to position HL7 development tools so that they exchange data principally in the HL7 Model Interchange Format (MIF). The principal features of these changes include:

RIM Moving Away from Design Repository

The Reference Information Model (RIM) will, in coming months, be maintained in an eclipse-based UML modeling tool, with direct conversion from XMI to MIF. As a consequence, the Design Repository in Access will no longer be needed or distributed.

Dual Mode Loading Implemented in Tools

RoseTree releases 5.0 and later are capable of loading both RIM and Vocabulary content solely from these so-called "core MIF" source files which are routinely distributed along with the repositories. (This capability is, currently, in addition to the ability to load from the repository plus a vocabulary core MIF file.)

The RMIM Designer tool (in Visio) has been modified to incorporate the same dual loading capability - picking up its critical configuration data from either MIF files or the repository. (Documentation is on wiki)

The Combined Publishing-Generator Tool distributed for desktop publishing by modeling and publishing facilitators, has been updated to support the dual-loading capability, with a default to load content from the MIF files.

"Just in Time" Loading of Vocabulary Content in Tools

RoseTree management of vocabulary content (loaded from MIF files) has been changed such that the concepts that are members of a Code System are not extracted from the MIF file until there is a requirement to display or use one of the concepts from the code system. This change reduces the memory requirements for both RoseTree and the RMIM Designer by almost 2/3, and speeds up the loading time by a factor of two. (Documentation is on wiki)

New WYSIWYG Annotation Editor for XHTML Markup in Alpha Testing

An Alpha version of a WYSIWYG Annotation Editor Widget has been distributed to provide better support for annotation editing in the HL7 Publication Database. This editor provides a more reliable and full function editor when compared to the previous editor based on XML Spy. It has no software dependencies other than standard compliments of the Windows operating system, and an open source web-based WYSIWYG editor. (Instructions for installing prerequisites, installing the widget, and using the widget are on the Wiki.)