In any but the simplest of HL7 messaging environments there will be multiple sources and multiple destinations of HL7 messages. It is very unlikely that all, or even a majority of these, will use exactly the same HL7 message structures in terms of versions, optional/mandatory segments, extension Z segments, and so on. A sensible approach to dealing with these kinds of issues, and a key component of the HL7 Enterprise Architecture, is the so called Canonical (or Common) Message Model (CMM). The CMM works hand-in-glove with the enterprise architecture in which transformation to/from the CMM is performed at the edges of the integration domain. This article discusses major considerations and works through the mechanics of deriving a Canonical Message Model for a fictitious Healthcare Enterprise and implementing it using the Oracle SOA Suite 11g HL7 tooling as an example. The article will also discuss and illustrate a mechanism for injecting arbitrary metadata into the canonical message, generated by the B2B Document Editor, in such a way that it is ignored by the Edge-dwelling B2B infrastructure but is significant to the SOA infrastructure.
The text of the article is available at https://blogs.czapski.id.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/HB01_OSS11g_HL7CannonicalMessageModel_v1.0.1.pdf
