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The Concept
The VA's VistA software is comprised of many clinical applications that
are based on a common infrastructure. A fully installed and patched VistA
account can require several hundred megabytes of space, without any clinical
data, and requires a great deal of effort to keep fully patched. Hey,
after all, it is an integrated Hospital Information System (HIS)!
Wouldn't it be useful, in some instances, to have a preinstalled, recently
patched VistA account that contained only the infrastructure? You
wouldn't have to use the extra disk space by having all of the VistA Applications
installed that you may not want to use. Well, the concept is reality and
it is a real gem!
NOTE:
If you are interested in studying the VistA HIS, then you don't want the
Diamond. It is way too much work to install all or selected portions of
the VistA HIS applications in the Diamond. Instead, you want the preinstalled,
patched applications found in the Platinum
Account that is available as a very large download from the VA's web
site or via media.
The Hardhats Diamond 3.0 install is a Cache.dat file,
which means you must have Intersystems'
Caché™ 2.1.x or better to use it. VistA requires many background jobs for
running Task Manager, Mailman Filers, etc. As a result, it is not feasible
to run a fully operational installation with less than a license that
provides about 20 jobs, of which 5-6 jobs can be users. You can,
however, experiment with limited simultaneous capabilities with a lesser
license. (Intersystems is offering a free single-user license for download
or on media.)
This very clean install contains the following installed applications,
fully patched as of the first quarter
of 2001. These packages are the ones released under FOIA.
- Kernel v8.0
- FM v22
- Mailman v7.1 (including patch 50)
- Programmer Toolkit v7.3
- RPC Broker v1.1
- *VPE v10
- *FixIT 3.0 development and
demo installations
- *GUIMail 2.1 (only on Diamond
2.0)
- Tested for:
- Red Hat Linux
- Windows (95/98/NT)
- Patches
* VistA add-ons
It is recommended that you visit the designated areas on Hardhats to
learn more about VPE, FixIT and
GUImail. Some of the add-ons require you
to install client-side software to use them, but they are well worth the
effort if you are interested in putting a GUI face on your VistA
applications or if you just want to see their potential.
Romance the Stone
Download
the Diamond
ZIP file (read our disclaimer)
and refer to the readme file and the following notes to get started!
First Time Installation
For those who want to evaluate the Caché Red Hat Linux download from
Intersystems, you can take a short cut and download a preconfigured
.cpf file. The file is named kernel.txt.
Rename it to kernel.cpf, once it is downloaded, and place it in the
Caché directory where the cache.cpf file is located. You will then need
to specify this new kernel.cpf file as the startup configuration for
Caché.
Update an Installation without
preserving work If you do not want to preserve any work in
your current installation, updating is very simple:
- shutdown Caché or make certain no jobs are running in your
Diamond namespace/uci and then uses the Caché Control Panel to dismount the
database associated with the Diamond namespace/uci.
- copy the new Diamond Cache.dat into the folder where you have the
old Cache.dat (this will erase your old Diamond, so be sure of
your decision).
- startup Caché or remount the database.
Update an Installation,
preserving work This is a complex problem, one which we
have not solved yet. Some of the issues are:
- Conversions performed on data by a patch installed in the new
Diamond
- Capturing and resolving pointers when restoring data into the new
Diamond
If you would be willing to help in developing a solution, please contact
us. Customizing
your installation Diamond 2.0+
If you elected to not use the name KERNEL
for your Diamond UCI or if you created a custom name for your Caché
installation, it will be necessary to run this program while logged into
Diamond. It will default to the name of your namespace (UCI).
DMD>D INIT^HHGMUTL
Production UCI: DMD//
uci/namespace: DMD - applied
vol:box : CACHE:VISTA - applied
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Troubleshooting
- VistA logon (the ZU program) displays "** TROUBLE **
- ** CALL IRM NOW! **", if the number of available jobs drops
below 3. For those of us with small Caché licenses, this is a permanent
condition, so you may decide to edit the ZU program to change the
threshold.
- When starting up the RPC Broker Listener, it must not be running
on port 9200 if you plan to log into the Broker with the server as
the client PC running RPCTest.exe or another RPC Broker application.
The client part of the RPC Broker uses port 9200 and will clash with
the Listener's use of 9200 on the same machine. Typically, the Listener
would be started on a port greater than 9200, in this situation.
Trademark notes: Caché is a trademark of Intersystems Corporation. |
