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RE: BIN segment question
So many clarifications, so little time.
1. HL7 messages *may* be XML, but not necessarily. Though they're moving
toward XML, there remain the older V2.x.x standards floating around and
they're done in ASCII with segments, elements, etc. albeit a different
syntax (naturally) than X12.
2. Even if they are XML, they could be ASCII if the XML includes a
declaration along the lines of <?xml version="1.0" encoding="US-ASCII"?>
(Hmmm, I wonder if putting that into my message I'll confuse anyone's e-mail
system...).
3. According to Merriam-Webster's (on-line), "octet" does not appear to come
from the French. Rather it appears to make it's first appearance in English
around 1879. "Effete", on the other hand, derives from the Latin and could
very reasonably made it's way through French before landing in the English
language. 8-) (M-W also indicates that "fancy-pants" first appears in
English as an expression circa 1945.)
With respect to the remark about why send ASCII rather than Binary, there's
actually a good reason for something like that. When EDI is transferred
from place to place, it is treated as character data. Let's not forget that
some systems use DOS/ASCII, others UNIX/ASCII and still others EBCDIC (to
say nothing of national language distinctions). Most systems and protocols
such as FTP or HTTP, when transferring data, have the ability to transform
from any one to another (in fact, I think lots of people take this for
granted). If true binary data was passed inside an ASCII text transaction
set from a Windows box (DOS/ASCII) to an AS400 (EBCDIC), *all* characters in
the transmission will be transliterated from their ASCII to EBCDIC
equivalents...even the binary. (FTP, for example, doesn't inspect the inner
data, it just moves files so it won't know that a small part of an ASCII
file is actually binary.) Therefore, ASCII, Hex or Base64 encoding makes a
lot more sense for transferring binary data. (Typically BIN is coupled with
EFI and the EFI16 element identifies the nature of the data in the binary
element. There is a similar, but more compact arrangement with the BDS
segment.)
Respectfully submitted with best regards,
Bill Chessman
Inovis(tm), Inc.
-----Original Message-----
From: William J. Kammerer [mailto:
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2004 12:14 PM
To: EDI-L Mailing List
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] BIN segment question
Everything is binary when you get right down to it. Robbi could be
sending an HL7 message, which is codified as XML (in ASCII - or,
technically, UTF-8), within the BIN segment of the HIPAA standard 275
Claims Attachment transaction set.
Addressing Robbi's other comment: "Sorry, but for this non-math major
the description of element 784 'The length in integral octets of the
binary data' is a little intimidating.....". You don't need math. You
need a foreign language, as "octet" is just an effete, fancy-pants
French way of saying "8 bit byte."
William J. Kammerer
Novannet, LLC.
Columbus, US-OH 43221-3859
+1 (614) 487-0320
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Brandt" <
To: "Robbi McClane" < <
Sent: Wednesday, 14 January, 2004 01:51 PM
Subject: Re: [EDI-L] BIN segment question
If BIN02 contains 100 ASCII characters, BIN01 would contain the value of
100. What is not clear to me is why you are sending ASCII in a segment
intended for binary data.
At 01:25 PM 1/14/2004, Robbi McClane wrote:
>Question on BIN01 on the BIN segment..
>
>
>
>If BIN02 contained 100 ASCII characters - would the value of BIN01 be
>100?
--
Tom Brandt
Northtech Systems, Inc.
130 S. 1st Street, Suite 220
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1343
http://www.northtech.com/
.
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