Cross-site Routing

[Daniel DeLoach]

v5.5 on Windows….

So let’s say you had incoming data (HL7/IP) coming in via a thread on one site, and you needed to route it outbound of another thread on a different site (same physical server, ie, same IP)….is there a straightfoward way to do this?

Topic

[Jerry Tilsley]

Straight-forward way no, common-way yes!  I know like myself and many others, the way this is accomplished is to send the data from the inbound thread on site1 to an outbound tcp-ip thread on site1 that connects to an inbound tcp-ip thread on site2.  Then on site2 pickup up the data from the inbound tcp-ip thread and send to outbound thread on site2.

[Daniel DeLoach]

Great. No wonder they charge by the thread.

Thanks I’ll set this up and see how it goes…

[Daniel DeLoach]

Well, it works (as I’m sure you already knew it would).

It’s curious though because I had thought of trying this initially but did not bother as I assumed that there would a conflict with the machine trying to manage separate inbound and outbound connections on the same port. But, I guess there is something deep inside the code handling this interesting protocol enigma…..good to know!

Thanks mucho for your help.

[Paul Johnston]

Daniel ,

We are about to try this as well. You mentioned ” . . .manage separate inbound and outbound connections on the same port

Did you use the same port from one site to the other.

ie Site A  – Outbound Thread AA  Port 9991 to

   Site B  – Inbound  Thread  BB   Port 9991 .

Is this correct. ?

Also,  was there any ACK/NACK  performed between these threads ?

Paul

[John Zalesak]

Yes, we do this alot.

Same port number on Site A and Site B.  One is Outbound and one is Inbound.

Yes you can ack/nack on them also. we use RawHL7Ack.  There probably is a more efficient way ack/nack then the HL7 ack but that is what we use and it works.

[Daniel DeLoach]

Hi Paul,

Yes, I am doing it just the way John describes. Seems to work fine, good luck.

[Jim Kosloskey]

Paul,

I would strongly suggest doing ack/nak – without that there is a good chance you could eventually have a lost message.

Also all starting multi-site. You need to give some planning to this direction.

I have been involved in multiple site integrations for nearly 13 years and have a fair amount of experience.

There are other posts on clovertech regarding some of the particulars related to the concept of multi-site utilization. It would be worth your while to research that further.

One important decision you need to make is regarding the handling of what may now be ‘global’ objects (formats, Tables, Tcl procs, etc.).

Do you keep multiple copies (one in each site where required) or do you have a global place to keep one copy? If you are on Cloverleaf(R) 5.6 or later, there is a master site to assist with going the global object route. If you are pre-5.6 this still can be accomplished via soft links but you need to decide how that will be deployed.

There are other considerations as well.

Doing this analysis early will save a fair amount of pain versus discovering the issues as you progress.

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

[Paul Johnston]

Thanks Daniel ,

I have tried it and it works great. Thank you

Jim ,

You have given me a lot of food for thought about going forward with this method.

We are on 5.4 but I recall at last years conference someone talking about the master site and global tcls, formats  etc… . These are good ideas and there are many things to consider.

We hope to migrate to new version next year so we shall start our analysis and making plans now.

Much appreciated.

[Author]

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