Moving from 5.2 to 5.7 and using the Mastersite

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    Topic
  • #51571
    John Mercogliano
    Participant

      Does anyone have pros and cons of using the mastersite over soft links.

      The biggest downside that we have found for us is that when we started using it we no longer have an easy way using find to locate what sites are using what tables or tps’s.  It does not appear to be an easy way to find out what site is using what files in a mastersite.  

      We are looking at abandoning it before going to production but would like to know if there are any other benifits we are not seeing.

      Thanks,

      John Mercogliano
      Sentara Healthcare
      Hampton Roads, VA

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      • #70808
        John Mercogliano
        Participant

          Jim/Russ,

           I found a couple of threads that indicate your site switched to using a master site when you went to 5.6.  Being your installation is on par with ours I was hoping you could answer some questions.

           How is using the master site working out for you? Have you noticed any benefits over your old setup.

           The biggest question, if you make a change to a cloverleaf table or tps in the master site, how do you identify what sites are actually using that table or tps in order to do a purged/reloaded for that site?

           That question is the biggest stumbling block for the group moving away from using soft links.  

          Thanks,

          John Mercogliano
          Sentara Healthcare
          Hampton Roads, VA

        • #70809
          Jim Kosloskey
          Participant

            John,

            This is just my .02.

            The dermination of which site is utlizing which common objects from the Master Site is an issue.

            Of course even without any common repository, there was always an issue with $HCIROOT Tcl procs because there was no indication which site they were used in.

            It is not as great an issue for us because we have few globally used Tables and almost all of our globally referenced Tcl procs are coded in such a way that they can be driven by arguments and rarely have needed modification.

            As a matter of fact, the primary message filtering proc we use here was first released in 1997 and was only modified twice. Once in 1998 and next in 2001.

            Both modifications were for additional functionality and were done in such a way that it was not necessary to refresh the in memory version unless one needed to exploit the new functionality. Anyone needing the new functionality would know where they were using it and cause the appropriate refresh.

            I have some ideas regarding how identifying the modules to be refreshed and where could be done. One method would involve Cloverleaf modifications and that would be dependent on Healthvision wanting to do that. I think that method is the only valid method.

            Of course, one could always include in their integration documentation a section regarding the use of global objects. That unfortunatly introduces additional constaints nit the least of which is the documentation not being kept up to date. After all you need to make a manual effort to set up the soft links so no more work to manually maintain a registry in each site or wherever.

            I guess one could entertain writing something that peruses the various object files (NetConfig and Xlates for example) and detect all references to things like Tables, Tcl procs, Variants, etc.; interrogate the directories of the Master Site determining which are global; maintain a registry that could then be queried for a cross reference.

            However, many objects can be referenced indirectly (specifically via Tcl) and thus would not show up in the configuration files and thus not in the registry.

            At this point, I personally feel the Master Site is better than the Soft Links for the following reasons:

              1. The selection of objects shows which are local, in the Master Site, or in Root (this was not there with soft links).

              2. Not all Unix facilities will chase down soft links.

              3. The future direction of multiple site support in Cloverleaf seems to include the use of the Master Site – not soft links.

              4. There is some funtionality I recall (especially in the NetConfig) where if you change an object from local to global (Master Site) by removing it from local the NetConfig automatically recognize that without needing to go an reselect. I am not sure of the details but there seems to be some of that and I expect more of this kind of exploitation will occur in future releases of Cloverleaf(R).

              5. There may be others but we have just begun to exploit this feature and this is what I see at this point.

            I don’t see us going back to soft links – but I have been wrong before.

            email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

          • #70810
            Richard Hart
            Participant

              Hi John.

              One the the benefits of Cloverleaf is the flexibility of setup.  We are quite a complex site 60+ production sites, including web services.

              We use soft links for ‘same’ sites and where we code translations in TCL scripts (the majority) we create a tclIndex file that ‘points’ to the library of shared code.

              The $HCISITEDIR looks like this:

              Alerts

              AppDefaults

              NetConfig

              NetConfig_ccm_prod_ih

              README

              Report

              Resend

              Tables

              Xlate

              eoalias

              exec

              formats -> ../InfoHEALTH/formats/ccm

              java_uccs

              local -> ../InfoHEALTH/local/ccm

              pdls

              revisions

              siteInfo

              tclprocs -> ../InfoHEALTH/tclprocs/ccm1

              views

              and the tclIndex looks like this …

              set auto_index(MakeMrn)

                ]

                set auto_index(MakeAcct)

                  ]

                  set auto_index(MakePtType)

                    ]

                    set auto_index(MakeLabHospitalService)

                      ]

                      set auto_index(MakeCtrlId)

                        ]

                        ….

                        set auto_index(ccm_code_smt_send)

                          ]

                          set auto_index(ccm_xlate_top)

                            ]

                            set auto_index(ccm_xlate_cap)

                              ]

                              set auto_index(ccm_xlate_ris)

                                ]

                                set auto_index(ccm_xlate_ult)

                                  ]

                                  set auto_index(ccm_xlate_gds)

                                    ]

                                    set auto_index(gen_code_resend)

                                      ]

                                      set auto_index(gen_code_msginfo)

                                        ]

                                        set auto_index(gen_code_printmsg)

                                          ]

                                          ….

                                          set auto_index(Print)

                                            ]

                                            set auto_index(RetRepeat)

                                              ]

                                              set auto_index(RetComp)

                                                ]

                                                set auto_index(ChangeField)

                                                  ]

                                                  set auto_index(SourceTablesFile)

                                                    ]

                                                    set auto_index(LoadConfigFile)

                                                      ]

                                                    1. #70811
                                                      Jim Kosloskey
                                                      Participant

                                                        I apologize for hi-jacking this thread.

                                                        Richard,

                                                        Your environment and our environment seem to be approximately the same size.

                                                        We are in the process of justifying additional resources.

                                                        We currently have 5 personnel that take care of everything engine related including all the on-call.

                                                        How many personnel do you have?

                                                        You can email me directly if you like in order to return this this thread to normalcy.

                                                        Thanks

                                                        email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com 29+ years Cloverleaf, 59 years IT - old fart.

                                                      • #70812
                                                        John Mercogliano
                                                        Participant

                                                          Jim,

                                                           Thanks for the info. We have a lot of global cloverleaf tables, so the lack of a search feature and the inability of viewing the tables from within the site are going to be show stoppers for the mastersite at this time. So, it looks like we are going to keep our soft links for the time being.

                                                           I definitely want to move to dynamic tables and 5.7 gives us new options just need the all elusive time.

                                                           Richard, thanks for the input.  We also have 60+ site and growing also.  We currently use a similar setup with soft links but I liked the concept of the mastersite so was exploring it. But because of our investment in cloverleaf tables for globals could not sell it to the rest of the team because of the lack of some features in this version.

                                                           Maybe our next upgrade  8)

                                                          Thanks

                                                          John Mercogliano
                                                          Sentara Healthcare
                                                          Hampton Roads, VA

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