Anticlue

CF Open Source List

Looking for a list of Open Source Tools available for CF? Check out Remote Synthesis's Cold Fusion Open-Source Project List. At this time, there are 95 Open Source Projects to examine.

LdapTemplate: LDAP Programming in Java

LdapTemplate is a framework to simplfy LDAP programming in Java, built on the same principles as Spring JDBC. There is a nice article over on java.net, LdapTemplate: LDAP Programming in Java Made Simple. which introduces the need to for the framework and examples of its functionality.

To start, Spring JDBC provides several utilities that ease SQL Programming. The idea of LdapTemplate is to provide for JNDI/LDAP(Java LDAP) a similar framework.

LdapTemplate completely eliminates the need to worry about creating and closing LdapContext and looping through NamingEnumeration. It also provides a more comprehensive unchecked Exception hierarchy, built on Spring's DataAccessException. In addition it also contains classes for dynamically building LDAP filters and DNs.

CSS Tab Designer

A nice tip from Sandy Clark, the CSS Tab Designer. The nice functionality is the visual creation, WYSIWYG.

An Open Source Cross-Platform HL7 Interface Engine

I recently came across Mirth, a Open Source Cross-Platform HL7 Interface Engine, and I thought might interest to many of you. The goal of Mirth is described as

The goal of the Mirth Project is to develop Mirth, an open source cross-platform HL7 interface engine that enables bi-directional sending of HL7 messages between systems and applications over multiple transports.

By utilizing an enterprise service bus framework and a channel-based architecture, Mirth allows messages to be filtered, transformed, and routed based on user-defined rules.

Creating HL7 interfaces for existing systems becomes easy using the web-based interface and channel creation wizard which associates applications with Mirth engine components.

Mirth is still in alpha, but it has the potential for some nice capabilities. The beta release is expected in early June. This is definitely something to keep an eye on and offer help if you have the time.

EZ Components for PHP

In learning PHP, a nice set of components has risen above the rest, EZ Components. EZ Components has a nice list of functionality.

Of the items to check out are the Archive component which allows one to zip or tar files. The file set of tools has a neat component for allowing file management, something needed in PHP. There are image components for analysis and image manipulation. Enterprise PHP has a nice context diagram of how everything relates. Snipped and featured below for future reference.

There are several different installation routes to view, one can view the components from SVN, as this tutorial indicates, or one can simply unzip and install the components.

Once installed, use the following code to initiate and HTTP_PATH_INSTALLED, is the installation location.

<?php ini_set('include_path', 'HTTP_PATH_INSTALLED');
require_once 'Base/scr/base.php';

SQLH2

It has been a while since MS releases SQL Server Health and History Tool. The good thing about the tools is that it provides a history of the changes made to a SQL Server, for those of us who are not using an ITIL change management system.

Sick of Manual Report Writing?

One of my core beliefs is that the data belongs to the user community, it should not be trapped and caged outside of those who can make it do most informative. Now there are movements towards business intellegence competency centers, which fundamentally will help make data informative. These competency centers combine IT and Business to make the reporting fundamentally beneficial. However for some places that's a future which may never come.

The other pet peeve of mine is to have someone manually run a report daily, and honestly I'm simply amazed in today's healthcare environment how common this practice has become. The reasons are due to poor, ridiculously unusable reporting tools delivered with some products. I've heard plenty of reasons ranging from our db is encrypted and that's a core business practice to if you want to report off of those fields buy this product.

Invariably there are then different solutions, which arise mainly based on the skill of the one needing to resolve the issue. Sometimes there is a large operational duty constructed or placed on an individual to derive the reports daily. Other times, another data source is created and loaded from the main source, but the data is available. Other times, fantastic BI packages are purchased but then only deployed in one department and politics get in the way.

So somehow we arrive at a place were resources are spent manually generating reports, or worse, basic necessary reports are just not created. If you end up in this deary repetitive place, check out BIRT.

BIRT works well when you have access to the data, and not any other report distribution tools.

Software Engineer: The best job in America

Money magazine has come out with the Best Jobs in America, Numero Uno is a software engineer!

SQL Server Anywhere

Recently, Microsoft let everyone know it is releasing a free mobil version of SQL db later this year.

SQL Server Everywhere will distributed as a component of Windows Mobile Services, which is included in many portables. The other value added benefit is the ability to synchronize with a MS SQL Server db, although users will need a client license. However a lightweight db available on PDAs has many benefits.

The RHIO Wiki

Good to see a community continuing to form, as the Center for Health Transformation, eHealth Initiative, and CHIME have established the RHIO Wiki. The Wiki will provide the opportunity for collaboration on health information exchange.