Re: [Gnumed-devel] remote control GNUmed

[J Busser]

At 11:46 PM +0100 11/27/05, Sebastian Hilbert wrote:
> This software is capable of calling external programs. GNUmed will be running
> in the backgroud all the time. Once you call a di[git]al document ( GNUmed
> Archive aka librarian ) from this commercial software it will raise GNUmed,
> select the corresponding patient and display the digital document like a fax,
> referral letter, you name it. No user interaction whatsoever. It will feel
> like a part of the 3rd party software.

There are two potential directions for "calling" and "remote 
control", my guess is that the main use case (at least in the early 
days of GNUmed including future v 0.2 "librarian") will be to let the 
third-party apps control GNUmed and not the other way around.

Below I will write "legacy" as it's simpler than "third-party". But I 
recognize we could be talking about software that is being actively 
maintained.

When called as "slave", GNUmed must expect/require login credentials 
based on whichever user of the legacy app is "calling" right? Or is 
that intended to be bypassed?  Because I would think that when 
patient identity or demographic information is created or modified in 
GNUmed, even by remote-control, there is value being able to 
attribute (record) those changes as having been made by the 
responsible individual. And so if the legacy app cannot pass this 
information as part of the "call" to GNUmed, then the user would need 
to enter their GNUmed credentials before their "call" would be 
answered?

And once that "call" were completed, what would happen to that 
instance of GNUmed? Would it timeout after inactivity based on 
whatever configuration is in GNUmed but provided there is sufficient 
periodic activity it would persist *but* remain responsive only to 
that user's processes via legacy app?

Would it be important that the legacy app's hooks --- upon logout or 
inactivity timeout user who called GNUmed --- kill the called GNUmed 
instance?

And suppose any particular user, whose activity in the legacy app had 
called GNUmed as slave, wanted to browse GNUmed to further examine a 
patient' s information (or to input directly into modules that make 
no sense to run from inside the legacy app) --- would the user just 
bring the already-running instance of GNUmed into the foreground? Or 
does anything about the GNUmed "slave" instance prevent it being used 
normally, meaning the user would have to launch a second (i.e. 
non-slave) instance of GNUmed?