Porting of CCAIR to Microsoft dot-NET, one year later

1
Porting of CCAIR to Microsoft dot-NET, one year
later

• Contra Costa County Health Services
• Siu Wing Tong, Ph.D.
• Information Systems Division

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What is CCAIR?

• Contra Costa Automated Immunization Registry is a
  centralized data repository designed to accept
  and consolidate all immunization history records
  from multiple providers
• Prototype developed in 1995

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What is CCAIR?, Contd

• CA DHS (partial) funding started in January 1996
• Remaining funding picked up by County
• In-kind supports
• Piloted in Contra Costa Public Health in 1996

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What is CCAIR?, Contd

• Selected by CA DHS in 1999 after HumanSoft
  collapse for replication elsewhere in the state
• Selected by Nevada State Health Division in 1999

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What Happened To CCAIR?

• Turned over a copy of web-enabled source code to
  CA DHS in 2001
• After the 2nd IRC held in Little Rock, AK
• CA DHS now maintains their CAIR version 3.x

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What Happened To CCAIR?, Contd

• Contra Costa Health Services retained
  client/server copy of source code
• Continue to operate as standalone registry

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dot-NET Conversion

• Porting of client-server version to Microsoft
  dot-NET
• Started in November 2001 using the then beta copy
  of dot-NET tool
• With dual front-end, browser and Windows
• Dot-NET development tool was declared out of Beta
  in February 2002 by Microsoft

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dot-NET Conversion, Contd

• Finished the first prototype before the 3rd IRC
  in PA in October 2002
• Prototype presented at 3rd IRC

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dot-NET Development

• Continue to upgrade, intermittently, throughout
  the year 2003
• CA budget crisis
• Need to work on other projects to respond to and
  prepare for the state budget crisis
• Also spent time on Patient Care Information
  System development, of which CCAIR is now a part

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dot-NET Development, Contd

• Went to user beta testing in this month of
  October 2003 within Contra Costa Public Health

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What is dot-Net?

• What is dot-NET
• Why dot-NET

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Why dot-NET?

• Want web-enablement
• Faster execution
• Old copies, both C/S and web 3.0 for CA, too slow
• Examples
• Shorter development time

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Why dot-NET?, Contd

• Code behind
• Separate into two files, one for user interface
  design and the other for logic code for ease of
  debugging

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Why dot-NET?, Contd

• No-Touch Deployment
• Piggyback onto existing web server and web
  browser infrastructure
• Launch application with URL
• Easy, centralized updates made only at web
  servers
• Automatic download to client browsers local
  cache

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Why dot-NET?, Contd

• Immunization registry program new features
  desired
• List of planned enhancements accumulated from
  1999 to 2001
• Support of mobile devices
• Support of alternative forms of input such as pen
  and voice

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Evaluation

• Fast development
• Browser Neutral
• Fast execution via compiled Active Server Pages

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Evaluation, Contd

• Easy development and support of mobile devices
• Easy development and support of tablet PCs with
  pen input

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Development Experiences using dot-NET

• Positive experience in general
• Would not want to go back to the older VB6 tools

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Development Experiences using dot-NET, Contd

• Negative Experiences
• Automatic conversion tool available
• To convert existing, older Visual Basic 6.0
  program source code to new dot-NET version
• Conversion tool not good to use
• Resulting in complete and total rewrite
• Visual Basic language version differences

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Future Plans

• Port to next version of Microsoft SQL Server,
  codenamed Yukon, which supports natively any
  dot-NET languages so that stored procedures may
  be written in dot-NET languages in addition to
  traditional T-SQL
• Port to Longhorn for variable sizing of
  characters inside screen windows

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Contributors

• Ates Temeltas
• Patrick Casilao
• Shirley Sianghio
• Carol Fitzgerald
• Bhumil Shah
• Siu Wing Tong

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Contact Us
Siu Wing Tong, Ph.D. Information Technology
Supervisor Contra Costa County Health
Services 595 Center Ave, Suite 200 Martinez, CA
94553 swtong_at_hsd.co.contra-costa.ca.us