Symphonia 3.8 includes a number of improvements that will let you design and implement robust messaging systems faster and easier than ever before.
The Mapper will allow W3C XML schemas to imported directly into the Symphonia Map Builder, and treated the same as any other message definition within the Mapper. As HL7 v3 is defined using W3C XML schemas, the Mapper will support the mapping of HL7 v3 messages to or from other EDI or XML messages.
A version of the Symphonia dynamic EDI engine has been written completely in C# for those wanting to use a pure .NET component. This component has a similar interface to the existing C++/COM/Java dynamic engines, but with appropriate changes to fit in with .NET API guidelines.
Symphonia .NET Component Generator
Symphonia will be able to dynamically generated .NET components with a static interface corresponding to the message definition being used. This is a .NET version of the Dynamic ActiveX Generation introduced in a prior version of Symphonia. This feature will allow the user to generate a static interface around the Symphonia .NET Engine, making it very easy to use, and greatly reducing development time.
A new type of segment called a ‘Tagged Segment’ has been introduced to support the NCPDP v5.1 standard. This type of segment provides some special handling for NCPDP repeating fields and for the identification of NCPDP fields, allowing NCPDP v5.1 to be processed correctly.
The Mapper will support type casting between similar or identical datatypes, therefore allowing more generic mapping code to be written. This is particularly useful when the message definition has lots of identical datatypes which can be treated in the same way (this is often the case for XML definitions).
The Symphonia Map Builder application can be passed an XML file on the command line containing a number of commands to execute. This allows the user to automate the updating of message definitions and recompilation of the mapping definition. This feature has mainly been added for Rhapsody to allow the Administrator to easily create new mapping definitions, automap them, and then compile them.
HL7 defines over 100 acknowledgment messages: one for each trigger event that can occur (for example, ACKA01, ACKA01…). However, each of these messages has exactly the same structure as the basic ACK message, even though Symphonia thinks that they are different types. Symphonia will support a wildcard message matching mechanism, allowing the basic ACK message to match any other type of ACK if that particular acknowledgment type is not present in the message definition. This means that the number of messages required in the message definition, and the development effort required can potentially be significantly reduced.
EDI Message Designer will introduce a new basic datatype called ‘Quoted String’ which has been designed especially for handling comma-separated value messages (such as a CSV file exported from Microsoft Excel). This quoted string datatype can use double-quotes to surround field values, so that the values are handled correctly even if they contain commas.
Explorer will be able to import a file containing multiple messages much more easily that it could be done previously. The Import Batch Message command allows the user to specify how the messages within the file are separated (for example, the messages are separated by a blank line). Explorer will then parse each message in turn and show each one in a separate window.