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Table Properties

A table is comprised of Columns, and each column has a number of properties:

PropertyDescription
Column NameThe name of the column in the table. Try to assign a meaningful name to columns because you will use them to access the data from your code.
Data Type

The type of field should be the same as the type of sub-field in the message that you want to map to this field, except for the date time. You are allowed to map any date time representation to a date time column. To make it simple, only four basic types may be chosen:

  • String - for text values as they appear in the message;
  • Integer - for whole numbers;
  • Double - for fractional numbers; and
  • Date Time - any date time representation, such as Timestamps, DOB, procedure time and date, etc.
Key (Iguana only)

For more information on the Key field, see To Database in the Configuring the Destination Components section.

To learn how to set the Key field, see Defining a Table in the Iguana HL7 to Database Tutorial.
Description This is the place to document the purpose of the column. This is useful for anyone who may need to map another message structure to the same table.
Inbound and Outbound scripts

Chameleon provides you with Python scripting option to pre/post process the message table columns before the message is mapped to the tables (segment level scripts), and the data in the tables after the mapping is done (table level scripts).

Inbound scripts: Used to examine and/or modify values just before they are inserted into tables (e.g. integers, date/time, doubles, strings, etc.).

Outbound scripts: Used to examine and/or modify values immediately after they are extracted from the tables (e.g. integers, date/time, doubles, strings, etc.).

Many pieces of data that you are used to seeing as numbers are actually strings. It is very important to distinguish between the numbers and strings to make your application generic.

For example, if you process MRN (Medical Record Number) as a number, you will run into the problem in the hospital that prepends a location id prefix before the MRN number itself.

Based on our years of experience in the integration field, we strongly recommend that you build applications as generically as possible.

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