> From the battered keyboard of Horst Herb > > Don't know about Medtech, but I don't think anybody would > *want* to reuse a HCN database schema inthe first place.
I was about to post much the same statement; as with a lot of software products that evolved over time, the data schemas have been evolved with the application. It is probably not how one would design the solution from scratch. I guess it means more work in the export/import processes if (for some strange reason) you wanted to transfer the data to another database, but would probably be worth the effort if you were reshaping the data to be more suited to your current design/development processes and tools. Oh, and also, I don't think foreign keys are defined in the MT database, so you need to hunt around for certain relationships (referential integrity is enforced by the software, rather than the database). > OTOH - copyrighting a database schema seems silly under most > circumstances too - just think of demographic data, not that > many different ways of doing it - a single copyright would > already prevent most competitors to implement a simple > address book ... I am sure there are plenty of copyrights attempting the silly, all the same. I think in my first decade of working in Health IT, I expected the cross-platform development of a standard model for, at the very least, demographics, altho this does not appear to be a priority for many. I was tempted to design a data model based on the HL7 ADT structures, just to see if it provided a complete solution. -- Les Ferguson Business Analyst, Health IT Auckland NZ _______________________________________________ Gpcg_talk mailing list [email protected] http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
