Continue vs. Send and the Xlate Test Tool

[Michael Lacriola]

Preliminaries: Cloverleaf 5.5 Rev 1 AIX 5.2 (soon to be 5.3)

I came across an interesting side effect when running a whole bunch of HL7 messages through the Xlate test tool to an outfile. First off, the xlate does some magic (left out due to secrecy). In all, it will “SEND” two outbound messages and there’s a “SUPPRESS” at the end. When running through the test tool, it displays the two messages per HL7 message accurately. When running through the test to the outfile for the same HL7 messages, I would expect to have a couple of messages in the outfile. But No! The outfile is completely empty, NULL, Zilch, Nada (fill in your own word).

Now, as a hunch, I changed the “SEND” to “CONTINUE” in the xlate, re-ran the HL7 messages, and VOILA! I received ny expected results in the outfile. I realize that CONTINUE sends whatever is currently on the outbound side to the next TPS in the STACK and SEND does not. I still do not understand why the test tool did not have the results in the outfile originally. Anyone?

Topic

[Tom Rioux]

The SEND action generates a message from all the translated elements up to the Send, and transmits that message to the outbound connection.

The CONTINUE action generates a message from all the translated elements up to the Continue, and places it on the disposition list as CONTINUE. This includes further processing of the generated message.  

This is probably why you aren’t seeing anything in your output file in the tester when you use SEND.

Tom Rioux

[Charlie Bursell]

Tom:

Not to the OB Connection but to the partial queue.   From the manual:

SEND – Generates a message from all the translated elements up to the send, and transmits that message to the outbound connection. This action allows the generation of multiple outbound messages from a single inbound message (the SEND and CONTINUE order is important). This bypasses normal processing and sends the generated message to the Partial Queue. Otherwise, it is the same as CONTINUUE.

[Jim Kosloskey]

I think the question Mike has is why doesn’t the Xlate Testing Tool place the messages generated by a SEND in the indicated output file (it creates the file – just nothing in it)?

The CONTINUE does populate the Testing Tool output file if specified.

It could cause someone to spend time trying to dtermine an Xlate error that does not exist.

Jim Kosloskey

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

[Charlie Bursell]

Because as stated, the SEND places the message in the partial queue while the CONTINUE places them in the list for further processing.  The SEND has bypassed the toll output.  If you want to see that I would suggest hciroutetest.

Sometimes the software does what you ask for so be careful what you ask for  🙂

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