Techinline, File Drops, and Mirth

This is just a collection of a few random things I've picked up lately.

Firstly, I used Techinline for remote support today. I was the user being supported, and someone from Canada was working on my computer to install and configure a product (BTW, I like the idea of an installation professional doing this task instead of me trying to follow a set of instructions and troubleshooting. The experience of the professional installer is quite valuable and time-saving).

As an end-user, it was great. Quick and easy to setup and use. The pricing structure for the support people (who are the ones purchasing the product) seemed inexpensive and flexible. What else do you need for a remote support tool?

Secondly, I'm noticing that file drops monitored by services are a popular way to communicate data. Communication of data is ... well... what the Internet age is all about. At it's core, it's about DATA. Data provides the information, information provides the power for growth, expansion, and profitability for your business. I've worked on several products that result in file drops to a directy, and that directory is monitored by a service. The service detects the creation, update, or delete of files in the directory, then takes action based on that. Visual Studio (.NET) provides built-in, easy-to-use classes to implement file-watchers. It's a neat tool, and often a good solution for a data communication need.

Finally, Mirth. Mirth is (surprise, surprise) a DATA communication tool. And a good one. Here, they say it best themselves:

"Enter Mirth Connect, the Swiss Army knife healthcare integration engine. Specifically designed for HL7 message integration, Mirth provides the necessary tools for developing, testing, deploying, and monitoring interfaces."

Mirth is able to poll databases, poll directories, listen for incoming communications, then translate from certain formats to other formats (HL7 and XML to name a couple), and proceed to insert to other databases, drop files elsewhere, and so on, and so on. There's a lot of ways to use Mirth. You can also operate on the data, too.

It's a server-based tool, so you'll setup a "Mirth Server" somewhere. Then you use their client to configure "channels". Channels are just "channels" of data - each channel can read data using whatever method you need, do whatever transformations/interrogations of the data are necessary, then send it onward. You can, of course, have as many channels as you need.

So the bottom line is you can get your data into Mirth any number of ways (the advantage is you can design your solution with more flexibility), you can write code in Mirth (mostly javascript) to operate on the data, then use their built-in data transformers to change formats or whatnot, then send that data on to wherever it needs to go. Very flexible, very handy.