Transmission Addressing

Discussion

Out-of-cycle meeting May2006:

Rene displayed a postal envelope with various elements representing different stakeholders in communication (e.g. middleware) Addressing in the context of middleware is part of ITS discussion.

Model Review Device connection to sender and receiver Telecom is a characteristic of how to reach sending or receiver.

Is place or organization objects part of the addressing? Addressing is not just device. Is the information recipient object something that has to be considered in the addressing?

What is a device – it’s a logical thing.

Some discussion ensued about the nature of organization on Device – it’s not quite clear what the semantic implication is.

If the informationRecipient is different to the receiver device then it’s an error, and the standard should clearly state that all the levels of the addressing should match.

Discussion ensued about scenarios where the receiver of the message is not the final recipient. What is in the device is not addressing the end recipient of the message, so the end recipient was in the organization. If we make the transmission wrapper abstract, we need to clarify what the expectation is in this area.

There was concern that a logical device is not an appropriate recipient for the message. But the device is not necessarily a URL, it can be a logical destination following the transport end-point.

Further discussion deferred to the outstanding issues list.

Rene: this question is about addressing. Does the addressing end with the device? or is the Place/Organisation for information or addressing.

Motion: We remove LocatedEntity and Agent from the transmission wrapper and we deal with addressing beyond the transmission endpoint represented by the device somewhere in the control act wrapper or the payload. Moved Rene, Seconded Sandy

Chris: asks about the notion of the endpoint. The endpoint is not a transmission end point, it’s the logical thing of where the message is going. Generally agrees with the proposal

Joseph: a bit confused by this – already BT/UK have moved these constructs into the control act wrapper. (But there was contention – they do use this).

Andrew: against the motion because it’s used this way in NHS. We do need to use organization in the addressing – the device Id may only take you as far as the data center, some other delivery mechanism may be required, and if this is left to the payload it’s not clear how this happens. But you don’t want a person at this level, and though the NHS does do this, we need to change the way this is done.

Paul K: the device indicates the logical end point not the physical end point. It may not map directly.

Grahame: Australia has the requirement. Removing these are ok; but leaving the other things to controlAct or Payload is not ok

Vassil: removing these is good; makes abstraction easy. The ControlAct information recipient is a good place for this information. Vassil supports this motion to increase the interest in transport specific wrappers.

Mark T: regenstreif has a system like this. Device is the abstract recipient of the message (i.e. community radiology department). cc:s to the recipient but this person is not an HL7 aware application. The application should read the recipient from the payload. But we should leave these things in because they make sense as they are.

Brad: is this safe to remove? Have we done due diligence?

Lloyd: Sending organization is a new thing not intended for routing purposes. It’s intended to identify legal responsibility for the message. We have a number of things

• Physical address – this doesn’t belong in the transmission wrapper
• Logical address – where does this logically end up.
• Who do I want to act on the content in this message (i.e. a human, or an organization). This is never processed by machine

Gaby: we may not be using it right the way it is, but in the payload – that requires too much negotiation. Putting it into the transmission wrapper allows for much simpler conformance and negotiation

Joseph: wants to disagree with Lloyd. Agent (person + system) sit in the control act. Make it extensible.

Charles: virtualization of addresses is paramount. Passing descriptive information of the address is a mistake - this should be done by registry.

Grahame calls the question, Vote: 18 - 10 - 5