Version 15.5 builds upon the 15.1 branch and includes many improvements, fixes, and new features. If you are upgrading from a pre-15.1 environment, please have a look at the changes made in 15.1.
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There are also many improvements which will also benefit smaller Connexion/Integrator deployments. As always, we welcome your feedback on these features and updates.
New: Connexion & Gateway API
We have built a preliminary API for both Connexion and Gateway environments. Currently, these APIs are geared towards the querying and creation of the main components of each environment (Groups, Tabs, Channels, Devices, Remote Agents). We will be evolving these APIs based on feedback.
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Connexion.Api.Orchestration.dll - Helpers for common tasks on both platforms, as well as the ability to create routes between Connexion and Remote Agents.
New: Batch Processing
The default queue modes process messages one-at-a-time and in the order of receipt. In 15.0, the ‘Multi-threaded’ mode was added to allow parallel processing of messages. This mode exposed the ability to group message pulled from the queue and then process those groups of messages in parallel. For example, X HL7v2 messages could be pulled from the queue, grouped by patient, and then those groups processed in parallel.
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Batch processing uses a new interface and function to allow the processing of a batch of messages. A collection of messages is passed to the device, and the implementer can decide on how best to deal with them. In some cases you may want to pass the entire collection of messages in a single call (for example, a web service that takes an array of messages), or, you may want to process the messages individually in parallel.
Please note that batch mode (threading / asynchronous programming) is an advanced feature that requires care! Read more about batch processing.
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ExampleA device which has support for Batch processing is the Remote Agent Sender device. This device brokers messages between Connexion and Remote Agents. Initial implementations of this device sent one message-at-a-time and therefore had a maximum processing speed capped by the latency of the connection. Even on fast connections, this capped throughput at around 40 messages per second. To overcome this limit, a custom batching mechanism was implemented which cached the messages into a local file and then periodically sent that batch of messages. This resulted in a 10x throughput improvement but required a fairly complex caching mechanism. When operating in batch mode, this device receives a collection of messages off the queue and can instantly send this batch without any custom caching mechanism. This mode is slightly faster (than custom caching) with much lower complexity and latency. |
New: Message Tracing
In large/complex deployments of Connexion (often including Remote Agents), it can be challenging to determine the path a message followed from origin to destination. ‘Message Tracing’ has been added to 15.5 to simplify this task.
Changed: Gateway User Interface Hierarchy
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Changed: Bandwidth Usage Improvements
The continued feature enhancements to both Connexion and Remote Integrator have necessitated larger and larger data payloads to be transferred between the UIs and servers. This was highlighted at the beginning of the pandemic as people moved to work-from-home over (often) slow vpns. 15.5 brings a significant improvement in load times and overall speed when running over slower network connections. We now page-in data on-demand (where possible) to get you up-and-running more quickly.
New: Gateway Map Dashboard
todo
Updated: User Dashboard
Both Connexion and Gateway have had minor updates to the user dashboards. Both now expose the ability to export the dashboard contents (to csv). The Connexion dashboard displays several new columns (backported to newer 15.1 builds) and the Gateway dashboard will now display users connected to all Gateways within the cluster (and a new 'Host' column).
Updated: Integrator Push Updates
todo
New: Centralized Server Connections
todo
New: Delay Queuing
15.5 introduces the new queue type (D)elay. Delay processing is a workflow where specific messages being dequeued cannot yet be processed, and should be retried later. However, other messages within the queue can be processed and should not be blocked.
New: Release Message(s) For Processing / Manual Message Processing
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Read about Manual Message Processing
New: Kafka Reader/Writer Devices
New Kafka devices: Reader, Writer
New: Globals bulk import/export
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Read about Bulk Global Operations
New: Gateway Nightly Backup
The nightly channel backup feature has been ported from Connexion to the Gateway. This feature allows you to backup remote agent channels via a file writer device (which allows the copying of these channel files to many different targets - ftp, AWS, Azure, etc.).
Functionally equivalent to Connexion, this feature will create a channel file per remote agent, allowing you to snapshot all the channels within each remote agent.
Updated: Connexion Plugin UI
A minor update to the device manager dialog within Connexion to indicate plugins which originate from the same assembly. When selecting a plugin, any other plugins from the same assembly will be displayed with a grey bar down the left side of the dialog.
When importing new versions of a plugin assembly, all plugins indicated by the grey bar will be affected.
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Updated: Queue Query Timezone Logic
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This means that when selecting a predefined filter (like ‘today’), the query is for the server’s version of today. Running a ‘today’ query directly from the server now produces the same query results as a ‘today’ query run from a different time zone (remote UI).
New: Remote Agent MongoDb Error State
todo
New:Channel Settings Device & Message Verification
todo
New: Remote Agent Decommissioning
todo
Updated: Alert/Event Purging
todoThe purge events UI has been updated in both Connexion and Gateway UIs. In previous versions, three options were exposed: Purge Today, Purge All, and Custom Purge.
It was common for users to simply click the ‘purge all’ button and flush out all events (which made retroactive troubleshooting difficult). The old options have been reduced to a single purge button:
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This button shows a new unified purge UI:
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The new UI typically restricts clearing events to a specific device or channel. When configured to clear all events / alerts, the user must have a specific permission and click through a ‘yes’ dialog.
Updated: Database Polling Device Set Seed
todo
Updated: Queue Device ‘Copy to Queue’
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The ‘under-the-covers’ implementation of copying messages from one queue to another has been updated to perform the copy in batches instead of a single operation. Previous implementations could negatively impact the database performance when doing a very large (millions) message copy.
Similar updates to equivalent operations (such as a bulk re-process) will most likely be rolled out in future versions of 15.5.