also is the pattern of other standards bodies including all ANSI standards and ISO standards, as I understand.
Dave At 12:08 AM 12/28/2003, Horst Herb wrote:
On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 13:12, Thomas Beale wrote: > exactly - this is the problem of N^2 translation that HL7v2 has. I was > just saying that Andrew's statement that "HL7 has failed" is not totally > correct; and regardless of the shortcomings (of which I can be as > critical as anyone else), there are quite a lot of implementations, and > there is a measure of success. It's been a step on the path, and a lot > of things were learned.
A lot has been learned, yes. But Andrew's statement - if we only look at what is actually available AND in use today - is correct: HL7 has been en exteremly expensive failure so far. A failure for more than a decade, that is.
Current development looks promising and I wish them wholehearted success - but
in one aspect they haven't learned from their past errors, and I consider
this non-learning a gloomy sign: that is, they don't publish their work
freely. You have to become a member to access their "standards". It does not
matter that membership is cheap - even a cent a year would not be acceptable
fpr the very reason that a standard cannot be a practical and ubiquitously
accepted standard (such as POP3, HTTP, HTML) unless the specifications are
freely accessible to anybody.
Unless they start understanding this crucial issue, I reckon they are doomed. No matter how much more money governments throw after them. The world in general is not very fond of such "closed gentlemen's clubs", and end user tolerance for such behaviour is close to zero nowadays.
Horst -- "On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." -- Charles Babbage
