Hi,



>Discussion was mainly around IXF/DXF standards for representing data, which I 
>ignored on my initial implementation, and likely will do so for now. I am 
>concentrated to make systems talk, after we can think of standards. This was 
>agreement with OpenMRS people, who insisted on standards, but after long 
>debates I made them agree to go my way. I am actually using XML for data 
>exchange, which is standard in a sense. Will come back to discussions while 
>progress is made.

This was not really my impression.  There was a breakout discussion of me, Ola, 
Murod and Paul (from OpenMRS).  Maybe there were long debates afterwards which 
I missed.  Anyway the prevailing view was that before we look at a new ad hoc 
way of doing things we need to be sure that there is not an existing standard 
way which is adequate.  There was nobody who thought creating a new xml 
representation just for this openmrs-dhis integration is a good idea.  
Unfortunately Ola and I also had not seen Murod's work in advance so it was 
difficult to present a comon dhis view.  Murod can you share more of what you 
have done to the wider group? 

Main issue was and is to map DHIS data to OMRS data. None of listed standards 
currently provide it. There should be a medium to dictate standard and uniform 
keys, names, and other attributes for both systems, from all available 
standards only SDMX-HD has some sample data and is good candidate to provide 
such service. Parsing is not an issue, validity of content is. That is where 
systems talk. This standardization is multy step and long process. omrs should 
follow ICD10 and dhis - SDMX-HD, there should be mapping between SDMX-HD and 
ICD10. This is my view of standards and might not be correct. Project I created 
is intended to link two systems in closest possible way, not to build standards 
or discuss standards. Taking this into account the rest of messages from this 
line onward are void. When there is proper standard and implementation 
instructions we can easily shift. 

In terms of discussion, the following options were considered regrading data 
format:

1. SDMX_HD - Paul had not been aware of the deficiencies which I had pointed 
out.  He was also at pains to insist that OpenMRS was not committed to this 
format yet, but like us, felt that it is better to align with a WHO effort if 
is feasible.  If its not, he's happy not to go that way.  I asked him to get a 
second opinion on some of the concerns I had raised from the OpenMRS team.

2.  IXF - Paul said that IXFv2 did not have the problem which SDMX has - that 
is that new codes and codelists translate to new attributes in the data 
exchange schema.  Given that we have both already implemented IXF parsers this 
might still be the basis of future interoperability.  Ola mentioned that Lars 
had implemented IXF parser in DHIS but that he cursed it often :-)  Lars you 
would know best whether this is a good idea or not.

3.  DXF - we didn't discuss much.  A pity, but time was short. This, or an 
enhanced version, will be a fallback if 1 and 2 above are not workable.

4.  Merger of 2 and 3 - this was quite an interesting thought.  One of the 
problems with SDMX HD is that it is based on an ISO standard.  Meaning that 
there is only a certain amount of scope to change things for the health domain 
- much of the rest is fixed by the ISO parent SDMX.  IXF on the other hand can 
be taken and fixed, developed and improved by its stakeholders.  It might be 
possible to take DXF and new ideas which have been suggested for DXF2 including 
elements of Murod's schema for example and develop these as IXFv4. 

Paul felt we need to create some sort of grid showing the pros and cons of 
these approaches and discuss on that basis.  There was some possibility of 
making this interoperability problem a topic of the September OpenMRS 
implementors meeting in Cape Town.

Of course all of the above is only formats - there is more to it than that.  
Murod did identify the minimum information set that would need to form part of 
an exchange to get data from OpenMRS into DHIS.  That is useful.  And the idea 
of writing an OpenMRS module to do the job - rather than waiting for OpenMRS 
folk to do it - makes standards less critical, but an expensive way to consider 
interop in general.  Though Paul had some suggestions around how the OpenMRS 
inference engine should be used which was a bit beyond "beginner" OpenMRS.  And 
Saptarshi had some thoughts around using the OpenMRS cohort builder to assist 
with aggregation which I didn't fully understand, but it sounded convincing 
:-).  We are all agreed that aggregation happens on the OpenMRS side.

Its a pity we didn't get much to web services and REST.  I guess we used 
Murod's work as the catalyst for discussion and ended up having lengthy debates 
on standard vs ad hoc xml instead. 

Regards
Bob

 


>
>>murod
>
>
>
>
>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>Post to     : dhis2-devs@lists.launchpad.net
>>Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
>>More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>



      
_______________________________________________
Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
Post to     : dhis2-devs@lists.launchpad.net
Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs
More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp

Reply via email to