New in Health Connect 2020.1

FHIR R4 Support

A new FHIR server architecture provides enhanced performance and FHIR RESTful API support for all FHIR R4 base resources. Transformations between FHIR R4 and SDA will be supported in a subsequent release. For more information, see FHIR Support in InterSystems Products.

HL7 Productivity Tools

This release includes three new tools designed to accelerate the process of building HL7 interfaces or migrating them from another interface engine.

• Production Generator — Generates the infrastructure of new interfaces (business services, routers, rules, transformations, and business operations) based on information in CSV files. Can also be used for bulk updates. For more details, see Production Generator.

• Message Analyzer — Scans HL7 messages to determine if they conform with an HL7 schema. If the messages deviate, the tool can make changes to a custom schema at the field, data structure, and code table level. For more details, see Message Analyzer.

• Migration Tool — Migrates transformation logic from the Cloverleaf interface engine to Health Connect. Future releases will support additional interface engines. For more details, see Migration Tool.

InterSystems API Manager

This release includes the InterSystems API Manager (IAM) enabling you to monitor and control traffic to and from your web-based APIs. The API Manager was released with the maintenance release 2019.1.1 and the continuous delivery release 2019.2 (an early version of 2019.2 did not include the API Manager).

If you are building service-oriented application layers, you are very likely to find the number of APIs you are using quickly rise. The more distributed your environment the more critical it becomes to properly govern and monitor your API traffic. The API Manager enables you easily route all your traffic through a centralized gateway and forward API request to appropriate target nodes. This enables you to:

• Monitor all your API traffic in a central spot.

• Plan, document, and update the list of APIs you are using and the servers that provide them.

• Identify issues before they become critical.

• Control API traffic by throttling throughput, configuring allowed payload sizes, whitelist and blacklist IP addresses and domains, and quickly taking an endpoint into maintenance mode.

• Onboard internal and external developers by providing interactive API documentation through a dedicated and customizable developer portal.

• Secure your API's in a central place.

The API Manager is interoperable, reliant, intuitive, and scalable. You can perform all configuration using a simple web-based user interface, but can also configure the API Manager using API calls, which makes it easy to perform remote deployments,

The API Manager is released in its own container. You can configure the API Manager as a cluster of multiple nodes, but even a single node can handle the load of multiple tens of thousands of requests per second.

For more information, see InterSystems API Manager.

Open API/Swagger Specification-First REST Development

This release enhances the API Management service so that it can generate the ObjectScript code for REST services from OpenAPI 2.0 specifications. This generated code handles the incoming REST call and you only have to write custom code to perform the specific function performed by the service. If you are implementing a service that is already defined in an OpenAPI 2.0 specification, your work is significantly reduced. Even if there is no existing OpenAPI 2.0 specification, it is much easier to create a new specification than to write the custom code required to define the REST API and the specification also provides documentation and aids anyone developing client code for the service. For details see Creating REST Services. (first released in 2019.2)

Universal Query Cache

This release introduces a Universal Query Cache, which enables every query (including embedded and class queries) to be saved as a cached query. Previously, the use of embedded SQL meant application code needed to be recompiled in order to pick up current table statistics or newly available indexes. Now, all query plans are managed in a single cache and can be purged (per query, table or namespace) when appropriate. This significantly improves the ability for applications to adapt to actual data characteristics when deployed to multiple sites.

Also, all query types can now equally take advantage of more efficient data access implemented in generated query code.

New PEX Framework for Coding Production Components in Java and .NET

This release includes the Production EXtension (PEX) framework that provides you with a choice of implementation languages when you are developing interoperability productions. In this release you can use Java and .NET to develop business services, processes, and operations and, also, inbound and outbound adapters. In previous releases, you could only code business services and operations, could only code in Java, and had to use a special code generator wizards in the Management Portal. The PEX framework provides the flexible plumbing that connects your Java and .NET code to the interoperability production components. You can connect your Java and .NET code using PEX with minimal or no ObjectScript coding. The PEX package includes the following classes:

• EnsLib.PEX.BusinessServiceOpens in a new tab

• EnsLib.PEX.BusinessProcessOpens in a new tab

• EnsLib.PEX.BusinessOperationOpens in a new tab

• EnsLib.PEX.InboundAdapterOpens in a new tab

• EnsLib.PEX.OutboundAdapterOpens in a new tab

• EnsLib.PEX.MessageOpens in a new tab

For details, see PEX: Developing Productions with Java and .NET .

Port Authority for Monitoring Port Usage in Interoperability Productions

The Port Authority utility allows you to monitor how ports are used in your interchange systems. The Port Authority examines the business services and business operations in multiple productions and instances to determine which ports are being used on each system. You can determine which ports are free for new services and operations and reserve ports for specific uses. For details, see Managing Port Usage. (first released in 2019.3)

X12 Validation Enhancements

This release provides two kinds of enhanced X12 validation:

• SNIP levels 1 and 2 validation — validates the X12 message according to the standards developed by the Workgroup for Electronic Data Exchange (WEDI) Strategic National Implementation Process (SNIP).

• X12 element validation — (first released in 2019.1.1 and 2019.2)

In previous releases, you could not use SNIP validation and could only validate the overall segment structure. There was no mechanism to validate the contents of the segment.

SNIP allow you to validate that:

• SNIP level 1 — segments are valid , segment order is valid, element attributes are valid, numeric data elements have numeric values, and message conforms to X12 rules.

• SNIP level 2 — meets HIPAA requirements, such as presence of required elements, non-use of elements marked as not used, and values conforming to the code tables.

X12 element validation enables you to validate that:

• Required fields are present and that all fields are allowed by the schema.

• Number of fields within a segment and whether they are repeated as allowed by the schema.

• Data types for fields and components are correct.

• Field values conform to the code tables specified.

• Field and components conform to length restrictions.

For details, see X12 Validation.

Enhanced DTL Support for X12

In this release you can define data transformations for an entire X12 batch including schemas for the interchange envelope, functional groups, and transaction sets. This allows you to process X12 batch messages using a single data transformation without having to use subtransformations. This release also improves the user interfaces and also provides convenience functions that make it easier to handle repeating elements. For details, see Creating an X12 Data Transformation.

Import X12 Schemas from XSD Files

In previous versions, you could only import X12 schemas from SEF files or InterSystems proprietary XML format. In this release, you can also import X12 schemas from the newer XSD schema files. For details, see Loading X12 Schemas .

MQTT Adapters

This release includes MQTT adapters that support Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol, which is often used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications. For details, see Using MQTT Adapters in Productions.

Selective Cube Build

This release provides Selective Cube Build, a feature of InterSystems IRIS Business Intelligence, that allows you to select the measures and dimensions to be built individually. You can make changes and selectively rebuild without taking the full cube out of service. The user interface also automatically flags the dimensions or measures that have been added or changed so that you know what to rebuild.

PowerBI Connector

InterSystems customers can now use Microsoft Power BI to access tabular and cube data stored on Health Connect. This allows combining the data visualization capabilities offered by Power BI with the high-performance data management and querying capabilities offered by Health Connect. While the connector leverages ODBC, it will also allow customers to access Health Connect BI cubes directly from Power BI when connecting to InterSystems 2019.2 or above. The connector ships as part of Power BI starting with its April 2019 release. For details, see InterSystems IRIS Connector for Power BI .

Pivot Table Preview

This release contains the Analytics Pivot Table Preview, a new mode for the Analyzer that presents a representative pivot table based on a truncated data set. This will allow previewing a pivot table much more quickly than analyzing the complete result set. A Show All button is also presented when in Preview mode to indicate that the result set is not complete. Selecting the Show All button automatically turns off Preview mode. (first released in 2019.2)