Tag Archives: integration engine

The Return of Internet Explorer

 ·  by Art  · 1 Comment

Yes, it’s true. With the latest release of Iguana, version 5.0.9, Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are now officially supported (again)!

For those of you who read our blog and/or our wiki, you probably know that we have a bit of a love-hate relationship with IE around the office.

Editor’s Note: Since this article was published there was a recount and it’s actually just a hate relationship: the first ballot was confusing to some of our more “senior” team members.

Anyone with experience in web development can tell you that supporting IE – particularly the older versions like IE6 and IE7 – requires a significant amount of trickery, hacks and effort. That support often means sacrificing development hours that could be spent on features, innovations and optimizations. It’s a burden that many developers would be happy to live without.

That’s why, a few years back, we saw a surge in anti-IE campaigns springing up across the web. You may remember campaigns like:

http://www.ie6nomore.com
http://hey-it.com/

That was a fun grassroots movement which was embraced by everyone from small start-ups all the way up to the likes of Google.  Within the healthcare IT and enterprise world however, it’s definitely a case of easier-said-than-done.

When you’re dealing with major institutions and hospitals, it’s occasionally impossible for the individual user or the integration team as a whole to use anything other that IE. So, while on a personal level we might not love IE, today we are releasing the latest version of Iguana with support for IE8 and IE9. We’ll continue listening and working to ensure all of our corporate users – including those who run IE – are able to take advantage of Iguana and all of the amazing features of the Iguana Translator.

We’d love to hear from the community though. What do you think? Is IE still the dominant browser in your office? Is it IE8 or IE9 – or are you still using the dreaded IE6?

You can download Iguana 5.0.9 today. Happy browsing and integrating!

-Art

Conversations From HIMSS11

 ·  by Eliot  · Leave a comment

Now that I’m back and well rested from the whirlwind of HIMSS, I wanted to share some of what I personally experienced at the conference.

Firstly, I was quite taken aback by the overwhelmingly positive response that our new approach to integration received. The unveiling of the Iguana Translator platform was a great success! Out of over 500 people who visited our booth, I can count the number of people who didn’t like our new approach on one hand.

I had a lot of interesting conversations at the show.

I spoke with an integration engineer from Chicago, who had worked with Cloverleaf. She explained to me how her team found that they had much better maintainability and ease of development when they kept to the TCL scripting side of the engine rather than utilizing the graphical mapper. She expressed excitement about the concept of being able to see what code is doing as it’s being written as well as modifying interfaces from within a web browser.

The Brave New World of Middleware – Part 5

 ·  by Eliot  · Leave a comment

Part 5: Redesigning the Modern Interface Engine

As HIMSS is right around the corner, I’m growing increasingly excited to showcase Iguana v5: our redesign of the modern interface engine.

In previous posts in this blog series, I’ve explored the headaches faced by integration engineers, the complexities in the economics of integration and the failed promise of graphical mappers.

I challenged myself to question the old assumptions of integration. I challenged my company to refuse to accept the limitations of integration engines in terms of visibility and control that users can have over their interfaces.

We changed the question we were asking ourselves from “How can we achieve integration without code?” to “How can we make code based integration work better?“. Not only did we find the answer, we’ve also opened the door to endless integration possibilities in the process.

Now I ask you to challenge yourself. Challenge not only what you expect from an interface engine but also challenge what you can do when integration is truly made easy.

I invite you to begin that challenge with Iguana v5. To explore more about what the latest version of Iguana offers please visit our Re-Thinking Integration page.

We will be proudly demonstrating the capabilities of Iguana v5 at HIMSS in Orlando next week. I personally encourage you to take the time to stop by our booth #3621 to see it in action.

I would also like to express my appreciation to those of you who have reached out to me over the past few weeks to offer your opinions and support of our new approach to middleware. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the discussions that we’ve had.

Eliot Muir
President and CEO, iNTERFACEWARE™

Remember to subscribe to our blog or follow us on twitter (twitter.com/interfaceware) for product updates, future resources and discussions.

What if… HL7 was truly made easy?

 ·  by Art  · 5 Comments

Today, we here at iNTERFACEWARE are very pleased to announce the launch of our newly redesigned website: http://www.interfaceware.com

The first thing people seem to notice from our website – and the same goes for our appearances at trade shows and other industry events – is our tag line: “HL7 Integration Made Easy“. I can’t tell you how many conversations I’ve had that have started with: “…you had me at Easy!”.

One of the things we’re most proud of here at iNTERFACEWARE is the fact that we’ve been able to make HL7 workable, understandable, implementable, … and even easy for our customers.

For those who are just starting their HL7 explorations and may be wondering, “How do you make HL7 easy?”,  I thought I’d put a new video together to help you get started.

What does an HL7 message look like?

 ·  by Art  · 10 Comments

When I created my first animated video – How does HL7 work? – I never imagined it would have the reach and impact it did.  In the few short weeks since it was released, the video has found its way onto dozens of corporate blogs, industry publications and personal sites.  It seems the interest in HL7 – especially when explained in plain English – is very high!

As the comments rolled in, a number of viewers requested a more technical HL7 overview video.   Not wanting to disappoint my “fans”, I thought I’d give it a shot.

It’s a good thing I’m always up for a challenge because as much as I love HL7 – and really, don’t we all – creating an HL7 tutorial to explain an HL7 message’s pipes, carets, tildes and ampersands isn’t exactly an easy task.

Have a look at my follow-up video – What does an HL7 message look like? – and let me know what you think.  Did I manage to capture the important elements of an HL7 message in a fun way?

How does HL7 work?

 ·  by Art  · 16 Comments

Whenever I travel for work, one of the most common questions I hear is “How does HL7 work?”

HL7 is not always one of the sexiest subjects, but as interoperability and connectivity continue to be huge drivers in the health care space, the questions of HL7 are going to continue to be asked.

So, after a little thought, I thought I’d create a fun – and hopefully useful – video describing what HL7 is and what it does.