I have been busy with lots of “behind the scenes” code on the project, most of which can not be shown so far.

As a “beginner” in C# I have learnt so much about the language, thanks in a large way to the valuable resources at http://stackoverflow.com/  the community there is amazing.

 

I need to work out how to post code snippets here on Posterous so that they display formatted, then I can post some code (to be ridiculed !).

 

Anyway here’s a screen shot for now …

 

I see there are other tools that have the same HL7 knowledge within them that don't seem to be licensed. So I am guessing not. - anyone know about this?

I could be wrong. I'm sure I haven't found every tool out there. If you know of any HL7 V2 tools then let me know.

The first user interface challenge that I needed to solve was how to visually show the structure of the message profiles. HL7V2 message profiles are quite conveniently organised as hierarchies and as such a Treeview control seemed like an obvious candidate.

I have used the Treeview control one or two times before and whilst I like it as a versatile control, I needed a bit more than the standard offering. Each node of the tree was going to have to show more than one type of information and I was to differentiate them by using colour. The "out of the box" Treeview control with .NET allows you to change the colour of the nodes, but does not allow more than one colour per node.

A few hours of googling and scratching my head and I arrived at the solution as shown below :

To get some scope and boundaries to the the first phase of the challenge, I've set some scoping statements for the first deliverables of this challenge :

• I want to create a HL7V2 message profile viewer ( that's right just read only at the moment )
• The HL7V2 profiles will come from the HL7V2 MWB tool ( Messaging Work Bench )
• All development will be in Microsoft C# using Visual Studio 2008 Express Edition.
• The code will not use any proprietary code or extensions, everything must be e Open Source

So with that in mind then the functionality must haves for the "tool" will include :

• Ability to open the XML format of the MWB profiles ( so need to build classes to reflect the structure of the XML )
• Ability to open multiple profiles at one time ( MWB tool only allows you to work on one profile at a time )
• Some form of docking panel for the user interface (probably use the Weifenluo library as it is free and seems easy to use )
• Development will be winforms based as I don't have the time to tackle the Microsoft WPF learning curve.

I guess that will do for the first iteration..

I have set myself a development project to help me tackle two areas of challenge that have recently arisen on my "Geek Horizon".

The two challenges are :

• The C# Development language
• HL7 V2 ( more specifically V2.4 )

This is my place where I set out my thoughts on how to use these two learning opportunities as a combined vehicle to develop an application that has utility for the HL7 community, but more specifically provides me with a wealth of learning opportunities.