Cloverleaf Level 3 Course

[Charlie Bursell]

Due to many changes in the engine along with some received requests, we are getting ready to redo the Level 3 course.  We hope to make it more interesting and cover subjects that people want covered.

As before, one of the primary goals of Level 3 is to provide the attendee with tips, tricks, and traps from a Senior Implementation Engineer.  The idea is not to simply provide the data but to show you how we use it.

In the past, we have spent the better part of a day reviewing Tcl since Tcl is so instrumental to implementing Cloverleaf at a high level.  We will no longer do that.  We will assume that you already know Tcl.  If you don’t have a good grasp of Tcl there is no need to attend.  We will send a PDF document that is a good review of Tcl to those that sign up for the course.  We will still cover some advanced Tcl such as namespaces, regexp, etc.

I would welcome any input from the User Community as to what should be covered.  You must bear in mind however; we have attendees with a wide variety of experience.  If most of the class does not have web experience, they will get lost if we attempt to cover Cloverleaf web capabilities in detail.  While we can cover subjects such as XML, X.12, ODBC, HTML, etc in detail, we do not have the time to provide a primer on any of these subjects.  In order to cover these subjects we would have to assume a certain level of a priori knowledge of the subject.

So, as you can see we always have a balancing act; how to cover what needs to be covered without losing half of the class or completely boring the other half.

With that said, I am certainly open to any comments you guys may have.

Charlie

Topic

[Bob Schmid]

knowing that you have Certified analysts out here since 94/95 (that’s me)…there has been alot of new ground broken in the past 10 years…and quite frankly….the documentation onlhy recently has gotten to the point of being able to use it.

We are one of those sites (2 certified folks) who are interested in understanding and configuring and working with XML and SSL and other protocols introduced mainly in the past 2-3 years.

We hope to attend in April

Money being tight….we have to choose..otherwise..I would almost be tempted to revisit Tech II to make sure we are ready for III…but cant $  😕

Bob

[Todd Lundstedt]

Charlie,

with respect to your comments re: web experience and web related material in the Level 3 course, are you referring to general HTML and Web server experience (as it pertains to building our own monitoring web page) or do you refer to experience with Cloverleaf’s Global Monitor product?

[Charlie Bursell]

Bob:

Thanks for the comments.  I will be teaching the Level 3 in April but I am not sure I will have the new stuff by then.  With that said, I will be glad to cover anything to any level you like after class.  That is why I stay in a hotel just like you do during the class.

Todd:

About the HTML experience level.  It is very hard to explain how the needed procedure and other aspects work if you don’t at least understand the differences between PUT, GET and POST and least a rudimentary understanding of HTML headers.  Nothing to do with Global Monitor.

If you have ever written a CGI script, for example, you would understand.

I hope this helps you to understand what I was speaking of.

Charlie

[Todd Lundstedt]

Perfect description…

Thanks, Charlie.

[Bob Schmid]

a couple of the areas that were not covered as part of tech II when we took it in the 90’s either because…time constraints or just not part of cloverleaf at the time:

If any of the following are now typically offered in tech II…please indicate.

I might also suggest a tech II refresher for a 1-2 day period…to address the folks that have not had certification under the newer versions of the environment.

I know most of thsi is level II type subject matter….but they are areas that we have had no formal training on the items below due to tech II, at the time,  focused on tcl and HL7, grm and queue architecture/recovery.

Thanks!

xml – simple inbound to outbound example

x12 – “

VRL’s HRL’s –

UPOC protocol

Http protocol

tcpip multiserver

ftps

if there are other embedded enhancements in the product that aren’t readily apparent…that might also be, as  arule, advantagous to know about.

[Charlie Bursell]

Bob:

This is what I have been doing is rehashing a lot of Level 2 with a Senior Implementers traps and tricks.  Some think we need more.

The problem with covering some of the areas you mentioned, HTML, XML, etc, comes when over half the class has never covered the subject.

For example, in a recent Level 3 class, I could not cover XML as only one person out of 8 had ever eevn looked at XML.  I can cover XML as used by Cloverleaf but I cannot provide a primer on XML itself.

I hope you begin to see my quandry here

Thanks for the input

Charlie

[Bob Schmid]

Would you have a rough syllabus available ?

Thanks.

[Charlie Bursell]

That is what I am trying to put together

[Bob Schmid]

Good luck,.

Im comin out so I figure whatever….I’ll be under “the master’s” tutor-idge…how can it be bad ? 😉

Bob

[Tom Patton]

Charlie, I would make any adjustments you feel are necessary for Level III and perhaps offer another class to cover additional topics like protocols, XML or workflow kinds of items.  I like the idea of making tcl a pre-req.

[Charlie Bursell]

Thanks for the input Tom.

[James Nelson]

I’ve already taken Level 3 and don’t feel the need to revisit it, but I’d certainly be interested in a separate class just dealing with the Advanced Protocols such as FTPS, HTTPS, XML, X12, etc. as these weren’t taught in my Level 3, either (probably for the same reason you mentioned in your earlier post.  😕 )

[Charlie Bursell]

We are looking at doing such classes if we get enough interest

[James Cobane]

I agree with James; these topics are something that we are going to be dealing with more and more, and there isn’t alot of information regarding the use of these (XML, HTTPS, etc.)….

Jim Cobane

Henry Ford Health

[Kevin Kinnell]

Seems to me that a lot of the background on XML, etc. could be handled by short web-based courses that cover where to find the information that will bring a student up to speed: a link bank, more or less, with some value-added material.

One problem with that is X12–free information was starting to become available when DISA got cranky.  UN-EDIFACT isn’t a particularly good substitute for learning it, either.

Maybe “Extended Course Packs” for a small extra fee?  “Here ya go kid, read this if you want to get the terse version of the Hooptigonian FQZ7.j protocol” (or X12).  Are member organizations required to charge the ridiculous prices DISA charges?

I think that would solve three problems at once.  It would provide information that would be expensive to obtain otherwise; “gather the pointers” to a sort of “standard” set of information resources; and it would leave getting the necessary background to the student (removing the burden of trying to cover it in a live course.)

[Charlie Bursell]

Good point but it also something an individual can do.  Google is as easy to use by the user as it by us.

When we decide to have such classes, assuming that is what customers want, we will indeed give them some places to find instructional data.  But there is no way we can find it all.  It should still be incumbent upon the user to find additional resources.  It depends on how motivated the person is to learn.

I don’t know if you have attended any of my classes or seminars where Tcl is discussed, but I provide at least two slides full of places on the web to gain additional Tcl knowledge.

You can lead them to water but you can’t make them drink  😀

[Kevin Kinnell]

Charlie Bursell wrote:

…

You can lead them to water but you can’t make them drink  😀

Oddly, when I first started using Tcl (my hot languages at the time were Lisp and Perl) I would drink at the drop of a hat.

It wasn’t  water of course …  🙄

Kevin (almost everything I know about Cloverleaf I learned from the documentation) Kinnell

HCPA

Hattiesburg, MS

[Jim Kosloskey]

Kevin,

Have you looked at wedi.org for X12/HIPAA?

I don’t think their membership fee is outlandish, but then again we are just starting to look at them.

Jim Kosloskey

email: jim.kosloskey@jim-kosloskey.com

[Kevin Kinnell]

Jim,

I last looked at them a while back — I think I was looking for info on the hIDc at that time.  You’re right, their dues are pretty reasonable.  I may join even if the enterprise doesn’t.

Thanks!

[Duy Nguyen]

Charlie Bursell wrote:

Good point but it also something an individual can do.

[Charlie Bursell]

We are not trying to assign Job Titles here, just name the certificates. Regardless of what we call them the certificates will be still be known as Level1, Level 2 and Level 3.

A rose bt any other name ………

[Sergey Sevastyanov]

Charlie,

I have couple of questions:

#1. I wonder if there are plans to make Cloverleaf Level 1/2/3 available as web-based training.

#2. Is there a way to get CL certification without attending a training course?

It happened that I had to take over from the interface programmer who left the company couple of years ago. I didn’t have any formal training of CL or TCL. I had to jump into support (and later building new)  interfaces using CL manuals, this forum, couple of nice books on Tcl/Tk and looking at existing interfaces to build my knowledge.

I’m not sure what would be my level according to Cloverleaf certification but judging from the descriptions of the courses I am probably somewhere at the Level 2.

Saying all that, attending Level 1 and possibly Level 2 courses can be waste of time and money for my company. But if there was a web based training for level 2 I would attend as I would be able to pick topics that I don’t have knowledge of and skip through the things I do know.

That would also prepare me for Level 3 training that I would be interested to attend.

Any comments will be appreciated.

Thanks,

[Charlie Bursell]

There are no plans to do Level training over the web.  It would be almost impossible to do.  How would you see the “deer in the headlights” look  😀

We do remote classes but it takes at least four or more students to make it cost effective.

If you feel that you perform at a Level 2 level, you can jump into Level 3.  Make sure you have good, not neccesarily great, Tcl skills.

Feel free to contact our training people directly.  They will work with you and tell you what can be done

[Sergey Sevastyanov]

Charlie,

Thank you for such quick reply!

[Author]

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