Step 1 - Data Acquisition

The first step in setting up any incoming HL7 interface is to collect some example data. After all, in order to design an interface that correctly parses incoming messages, you'll need to have a good understanding of what you will be parsing. Not only is this sample data useful during interface design, but obviously it can be used later when you are unit testing your interface.

There are generally three ways you could acquire some data for testing:

Option	Method	Explanation
1	Obtain messages from the originator:	Try to get some sample HL7 messages emailed to you from the message originator.
2	Acquire your own messages:	You could use the HL7 Listener to listen on a network port to retrieve HL7 messages and log them to a text file.
3	Use sample messages:	You can find some sample ADT messages in the message.txt file located in the Chameleon install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\iNTERFACEWARE\Chameleon).

In this tutorial, you will be using option number three.

iNTERFACEWARE™ Inc.

Step 1 - Data Acquisition