HL7 and BizTalk Blog

It seems that every client that I assist in implementing HL7, we get to testing the process and we send in an ADT, ORM, ORU, or some other message and we wait for the automated acknowledment, but it never comes.

I then remember that unless I have MLLP version 1.0.308.0, and 1.0.309.0 (current) of Microsoft.solutions.btahl7.mllp.dll I better camp out for a while, while I know it states that it can take up to 10 seconds to get the ack, I have gone to lunch and come back with no response. I even heard that there is a 24 hr delay. So make sure that you have the following patches from Microsoft for the HL7 adapter.

• KB893369: HL7 Interrogative transactions may take 10 or more seconds to complete when MLLP synchronizes communications end-to-end
• KB893404: The BizTalk Accelerator for HL7 sends an acknowledgement message to the source system after a long delay

Don’t forget to follow the post installation instruction on getting the send adapter to be a solicit/response as documented here.

I had forgot that a while ago, I had to create a custom HL7 message, and I saw a question on the forum asking how you can do it.

Here are the steps: (All modifications take place in both the MSH_231_GLO_DEF and the tablevalues.xsd). In this example I am creating a ZZZ^Z01 message;

1. Edit Table76 and add the message type (add an enumeration) by editing the schema in a text editor:(in my case ZZZ)
    
2. Edit Table3 to represent the trigger:(in my case Z01)
    
3. Edit the MSH 9.0 Sub Element
    
4. Edit the MSH 9.1 Sub Element
   
5. Finally create your schema with the root node that follows the following algorithm: Body schema type = TargetNS + “#” + MSH9.1 + MSH9.2 + MSH12.1 (with dots removed) + MSH12.2 (or GLO if the value is blank) + MSH12.3 (or DEF if the value is blank), and don’t forget to make sure that the target namespace of the schema matches what you have defined in the BTAHL7 Configuration Explorer
   

Some things to make note of:

• If you are making this new message for a target namespace not the default, the MSH schema that comes needs to be modified. The BTAHL7 pipeline will only look for the default one that comes installed.
• Make sure that the message that is coming in has the EVN.1 code that matches the MSH.9

This is a gotcha that is hard to figure out, especially if you are trying to install and don’t have the documentation in front of you, because it is trying to install it!

In the documentation, it states:

Log on using an account that is a member of the BizTalk Server Administrators group.

Note  This user account must also be a member of the Administrators group on the SQL Server in which you will store BTAHL7 data.

This is normally an issue when you install it and it states: ‘The Specified account “###/###” is
invalid. Error code: Logon Failure: unknown user name or bad password.’

I can’t remember how many times I have read entries posted on the various forums asking how to get looping correct in the HL7 messages. A couple of friends have asked how I have done it, so I thought that I would post how you do it.

The real issue is that the looping does not follow the necessary structure defined in the HL7 schemas. The source records in many cases need to match with sequence group (which is not possible in the BizTalk mapper). In the following example, after mapping out some sample data, I manually ran the map, and this is the result I received for the ORU_R01:

but this will not work, because OBR 4.1 does not repeat and will cause the BTAHL7 ASM will throw errors, for this and a LOT of other non-conforming message structures.

In the mapper, what I really need is highlighted in RED:

So I reverted to XSLT to do what I needed to be done. I did all of the mapping, afterwards, I right clicked the map and chose Validate Map, and opened up the TestMap_xslt.xml in a text editor.

I then edited the xslt and moved around/deleted the xsl:for-each select=”Order” tags, and also some of the tags. I then saved the document as XSLTMap.xslt.I created a new map (XSLTMap.btm), defined the input schema and the output schema, clicked on the grid and chose Custom XSLT Path and browsed to the xslt file I just created (XSLTMap.xslt). I then tested it against the xml document and made sure that it looked correct.

In the orchestration I created a construct shape, and created 3 maps that defined all three message parts (compared to how the tutorial works, as I don’t really like to hard code stuff in a message assignment shape). I did have to assign some context properties in a message assignment shape, and then sent it off.

I ended up getting the following error:
Alternate Error Number: 301
Alternate Error Description: XmlReader not positioned at root elment of ‘ORU_R01_231_GLO_DEF’
Alternate Encoding System: HL7-BTA

The issue ended up being that in my custom xslt, there is the following tag: omit-xml-declaration=”no”

This caused the BodySegments message part to look like this at the beginning of the message:

So in the xslt, it is necessary to make sure that the omit-xml-declaration=”yes”

Here is the example (BizTalk 2004) that transforms the following XML message:

And transforms it in the correct repeating structure to:

MSH|^~&|Sender||Receiver||||ORU^R01|1234567|D|2.3.1
OBR||||^ServiceID_1
NTE|||Note_1
OBX||AD|^Text_1||||||||C
NTE|||Comment_1~Comment_2
OBX||CE|^Text_2||||||||D
NTE|||Comment_3~Comment_4
OBX||CF|^Text_3||||||||F
NTE|||Comment_5~Comment_6
OBX||CK|^Text_4||||||||I
NTE|||Comment_7
CTI|^^Id_1
OBR||||^ServiceID_2
NTE|||Note_2
OBX||CN|^Text_5||||||||N
NTE|||Comment_8~Comment_9
OBX||CP|^Text_6||||||||O
NTE|||Comment_10
CTI|^^Id_2

So in order to keep the correct looping, you need to be a little XSLT savy, but after playing with it for a little bit, you should be able to get your output correct.

The solution has the initial mapping called TestMap.btm, the results of that map:HL7Msg_MisAlligned_BodySegments.xml, the final map: XSLTMap.btm, the trigger xml:Data.xml, along with the 2XCommon and 231Common projects.

I checked with some friends at Microsoft to confirm that this is the only solution for the looping dilemma but it looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel (I will post the official documentation as soon as I know):

“This is a known issue in the BizTalk mapper which impacts mapping HL7 v2.x schemas.

I’m happy to report some good news on this.  A DCR, to allow the BizTalk mapper to preserve order for repeating segments in the XSLT generation process, has been accepted this week to be included in BizTalk Server 2006 R2.  In the meantime, we are documenting a process that requires generating an XSLT with the BizTalk mapper, then manually inserting a loop in the XSLT around the nodes in the sequence where the order needs to be preserved. “

In an effort to expand on this entry, while testing, there are many times where I have to use the mllpreceive.exe to capture data.

I have made it easy by adding right click functionality.

I created a batch file called Receive.bat with the following contents:

MLLPRECEIVE.EXE /P 12000 /SPLIT /SB 11 /EB 28 /CR 13 /D %1

I then went into Tools -> folder options and choose File Types and chose Folder (not File Folder) and choose Advanced. In the Action I put mllp and the Application used to perform this action I type “{path}Receive.bat” “%1″

Now when I want to receive message and put them in a particuar folder, I right click on the folder, choose mllp from within Explorer, and a dos window comes up with the correct folder that will be the location of where the data will be written to.