Route Outbound Reply on Separate Port

[Bob Richardson]

Greetings,

Running CIS5.8.7.0 on AIX 6.1 TL 7 Virtualized.

I have a lab point of care vendor (PWEB) who insists that they get a Reply down a separate port for an ORU (Result) message sent to the integrator on a different port.  For all of our shop’s interfaces we have always sent a Reply back on the same port.

Not saying that this is not doable but looking for guidelines on how you would implement such a beast in your shop for ease of maintenance.

One thought:  create a client connection in the same process to the reply port; on the inbound thread at TPS IB create the reply; set the destconn to the reply thread; OVER the Reply.

Thank you in advance.

Topic

[Jim Kosloskey]

Bob,

That is a good solution.

Another option comes to mind.

Route the IB message to the OB (reply) port and convert the IB message to an ack/nak via Xlate. This would leave an obvious trail and give you flexibility in determining whether to ack or nak the message.

The downside in either case is it is possible the vendor won’t wait for an acknowledgment before sending the next message.

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

[Bob Richardson]

Jim,

Thanks for the suggestion – I like it – paints visible route lines at least for our Integrator version.  (I think 6.0 is supposed to show reply routes).

Right now, I have battled back to the vendor who does have an option to disable what they call “enhanced resulting” or expecting a reply back on a separate port.  Sometimes it helps to just say “No” (unheard of in the medical industry but you never know until you try…).

Putting this into my tool kit for future reference.

Thanks again!

[Jim Kosloskey]

Bob,

Yes sometimes the vendor’s representative you are talking with do not know their product fully so it never hurts to fight the battle (after all you are the customer).

I think Reply Routes can be visible in pre-6.0 but there is a setting which normally off you need to turn on.

The only logical use for a separate port reply I can think of is when there is to be both a message receipt acknowledgment (normally over the same port) and an application level acknowledgment which could be via a separate port. X12 exchanges will sometimes do this.

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

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