dhis2-devs team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

2009/8/1 Murodullo Latifov <murodlatifov@xxxxxxxxx>

>
> Hi,
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Jo Størset <storset@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: DHIS 2 developers <dhis2-devs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 3:30:41 PM
> Subject: Re: [Dhis2-devs] DHIS OpenMRS integration
>
> Hi,
>
> Den 28. juli. 2009 kl. 14.51 skrev Saptarshi Purkayastha:
>
> > But mayb like Bob said, 2morrow's discussions may give some clearer
> idea!!
>
> How did the discussions go?
>
> Personally I cannot contribute much yet, but in a months time hopefully I
> will have some more time on my hands. It would be nice to try to keep the
> work in the open, so I, for one, can try to keep up-to-date.
>
> Jo
>
> Discussion was mainly around IXF/DXF standards for representing data, which
> I ignored on my initial implementation, and likely will do so for now. I am
> concentrated to make systems talk, after we can think of standards. This was
> agreement with OpenMRS people, who insisted on standards, but after long
> debates I made them agree to go my way. I am actually using XML for data
> exchange, which is standard in a sense. Will come back to discussions while
> progress is made.


This was not really my impression.  There was a breakout discussion of me,
Ola, Murod and Paul (from OpenMRS).  Maybe there were long debates
afterwards which I missed.  Anyway the prevailing view was that before we
look at a new ad hoc way of doing things we need to be sure that there is
not an existing standard way which is adequate.  There was nobody who
thought creating a new xml representation just for this openmrs-dhis
integration is a good idea.  Unfortunately Ola and I also had not seen
Murod's work in advance so it was difficult to present a comon dhis view.
Murod can you share more of what you have done to the wider group?

In terms of discussion, the following options were considered regrading data
format:

1. SDMX_HD - Paul had not been aware of the deficiencies which I had pointed
out.  He was also at pains to insist that OpenMRS was not committed to this
format yet, but like us, felt that it is better to align with a WHO effort
if is feasible.  If its not, he's happy not to go that way.  I asked him to
get a second opinion on some of the concerns I had raised from the OpenMRS
team.

2.  IXF - Paul said that IXFv2 did not have the problem which SDMX has -
that is that new codes and codelists translate to new attributes in the data
exchange schema.  Given that we have both already implemented IXF parsers
this might still be the basis of future interoperability.  Ola mentioned
that Lars had implemented IXF parser in DHIS but that he cursed it often
:-)  Lars you would know best whether this is a good idea or not.

3.  DXF - we didn't discuss much.  A pity, but time was short. This, or an
enhanced version, will be a fallback if 1 and 2 above are not workable.

4.  Merger of 2 and 3 - this was quite an interesting thought.  One of the
problems with SDMX HD is that it is based on an ISO standard.  Meaning that
there is only a certain amount of scope to change things for the health
domain - much of the rest is fixed by the ISO parent SDMX.  IXF on the other
hand can be taken and fixed, developed and improved by its stakeholders.  It
might be possible to take DXF and new ideas which have been suggested for
DXF2 including elements of Murod's schema for example and develop these as
IXFv4.

Paul felt we need to create some sort of grid showing the pros and cons of
these approaches and discuss on that basis.  There was some possibility of
making this interoperability problem a topic of the September OpenMRS
implementors meeting in Cape Town.

Of course all of the above is only formats - there is more to it than that.
Murod did identify the minimum information set that would need to form part
of an exchange to get data from OpenMRS into DHIS.  That is useful.  And the
idea of writing an OpenMRS module to do the job - rather than waiting for
OpenMRS folk to do it - makes standards less critical, but an expensive way
to consider interop in general.  Though Paul had some suggestions around how
the OpenMRS inference engine should be used which was a bit beyond
"beginner" OpenMRS.  And Saptarshi had some thoughts around using the
OpenMRS cohort builder to assist with aggregation which I didn't fully
understand, but it sounded convincing :-).  We are all agreed that
aggregation happens on the OpenMRS side.

Its a pity we didn't get much to web services and REST.  I guess we used
Murod's work as the catalyst for discussion and ended up having lengthy
debates on standard vs ad hoc xml instead.

Regards
Bob



>
>
> murod
>
>
>
>
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