Cloverleaf comparison with Ensemble

[Tom Arrowsmith]

I work for Inova Health systems which is comprised of 5 hospitals and numerous secondary facilities in Northern Virginia. Currently, all facilities except for the one I work at, Inova Loudoun Hospital, use the Datagate Interface Engine. At Inova Loudoun Hospital we use Cloverleaf.

Senior IT admisistration has determined that thay want to move away from Datagate at this time and are currently involved in assessing possibilities for an interface engine that will replace it – but at the same time the goal will also be that all 5 hospitals will be on the same interface engine.

Their search has led them to the point that they have decided that there are two frontrunners – Cloverleaf or Ensemble (from InterSystems)

So – Inova Loudoun Hospital might keep Cloverleaf – with the rest of the Inova hospitals coming on board with it – or – we will all go to Ensemble.

I’m very interested in hearing from anyone who knows both engines and can compare and contrast the strong points and weak points of either. I’d even be interested in any second hand anecdotal stories…..

Thanks!

Topic

[Jeff Dinsmore]

A few years ago, I evaluated Ensemble along with other engines and was not terribly impressed with the overall package.

For example, HL7 variants had to be created by hand – in a text editor.

As I recall, Ensemble is also a much bigger, more complex package than Cloverleaf. If all you need is to do interfaces, it may be overkill.

Jeff Dinsmore
Chesapeake Regional Healthcare

[Gary Atkinson]

I am being moved from CL to Ensemble at my facility.  The biggest issue I have is it is like a big black box of objects.  Its hard to hack things where as CL is like a open book and you can create your own story.

[Gary Atkinson]

Oh will add you have to been familiar with object oriented programming to really use Ensemble to it’s full.  Using studio is a pain, esp since you can’t indent your code!  I thought TCl was much easier to learn then Cache or Objectscript…

[Author]

Replies