On Feb 19, 2006, at 5:51 PM, Chris Richardson wrote:
Just as I thought. Thanks, Cameron.
Are there other issues that anyone might see about this arrangement?
Perhaps Rick can comment.
Although, ZZ* is set aside as a local namespace, so far as I know,
there is no such thing as a local (meaning unregistered) number
space. Existing facilities can, of course, use their facility number
to derive a private (but not unregistered) number space.
Unfortunately, that is of no use to anyone without an assigned
institution number. Worse, some packages (such as IFCAP) require an
assigned station number, and you often cannot even get into the menu
system without one. But there is no infrastructure to support
federated management of station numbers, and anything that might be
developed would almost surely conflict with the INSTITUTION file as
implemented in VHA (which cannot be modified locally). This is but
one example of a file that may appear to be something that can be
modified and administered locally: consider the use of the ICN to
identify patients or standardization of files like the ITEM MASTER
(#441). This seems to me to be a rather serious problem, in many
ways analogous to address exhaustion in IPv4. In the case of IP,
Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR) provided a "quick fix" allowing
the number of bits set aside for addresses (vs. network numbers) to
vary (that's what the the slash in routing table entries is all
about). Maybe a CIDR like solution is possible, but it would only be
a temporary expedient. Expanding the station number to include more
digits (or noncanonic numbers, as has been suggested) would require a
LOT of work. It's easy to underestimate the number of utilities,
options, input transforms, fixed width messages, etc. that would be
affected. It's a big problem.
===
Gregory Woodhouse
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Good acts are like good poems. One may easily get their drift, but
they are not rationally understood."
--Albert Einstein
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