Question about ACKs

[Matthew Rasmussen]

A colleage of mine did some research, and she discovered that hl7Raw_ack.tcl sends the ACK message back to the sending application, preserving the values in the MSH-3 and MSH-5 fields.  And RawHl7Ack.tcl reverses the MSH-3 and MSH-5 fields, when creating the acknowledgement message.

For an Inbound TCP/IP PDL thread, when is it appropriate to use hl7Raw_ack.tcl as the acknowledgement handler proc, vs.RawHl7Ack.tcl?  

Another colleague of mine found reference in the HL7 2.3.1 (HBOCHI) specification, stating that the convention employed in RawHl7Ack.tcl is correct, according to this particular spec.  Still there must be a reason for hl7Raw_ack.tcl to exist.  The MSH-3 field is the sending application, and the MSH-5 field is the receiving application.  In theory, the ACK is technically a message unto itself.  But I can also see how it might also be interpreted as a control measure for the message to which the ACK refers.  With regards to the message itself, the “sending application,” and “receiving application” fields’ references are easy to interpret.  But with regards to the ACK, there seems to be some ambiguity.  And what we have noticed is that most vendors just don’t care about the value presented in these two fields, for an acknowledgement message…

So my question is, is anyone aware of a variant or specification, that requires the convention of hl7Raw_ack.tcl, vs. RawHl7Ack.tcl?  

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[Russ Ross]

I feel better to adhere to the HL7 standard, even though neither of us has observed that vendors seem to care much at all about the order of these MSH fields.

Russ Ross
RussRoss318@gmail.com

[Charlie Bursell]

! am a bit confused by this.   I wrote hl7Rawack well over 10 years ago.  Since that time very little has been done other than to modify it not to send replies when resending messages.  Also, about 5 or 6 years ago I rewrote it to use namespaces and sub-routines.

It has always switched the sending/receiving fields in the MSH before sending the reply.  As far as I know, given the many millions of records processed through it, no one receiving the reply has complained.

I have no idea what RawHl7Ack is or who wrote it.  There have been many that feel they must do their own that have written variations.

As I have said many times with any of the tools or procedures I have furnished over the years, I am not married to any of them.  They are there if you want to use them but if you don’t like them feel free to modify or rewrite to suit your purposes.

[Michael Hertel]

Hey Charlie, see this post.

[Charlie Bursell]

Thanks for reminding me Michael.   Too many dead brain cells  😀

But I did upload an updated copy.  If the updated copy did not make it into the later releases let Dean in Support know and he can get it updated.

Meanwhile for anyone that needs it, it is available at the link Michael provided

[Author]

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