The first step is to examine the sample VMD file and test the parsing functionality:

• Open the sample VMD file you downloaded.
• Click the Browse icon in the toolbar. The Message Browser appears.
• Paste the following message in the top pane of the Message Browser:

MSH|^~\&|MESA_ADT|XYZ_ADMITTING|MESA_IS|XYZ_HOSPITAL|20010404||ADT^A04|101102|P|2.5||||||||
EVN||200004211000||||200004210950
PID|||583020^^^ADT1||WHITE^CHARLES||19980704|M||AI|7616 STANFORD AVE^^ST. LOUIS^MO^63130|||||||20-98-1701||||||||||||
PV1||E||||||5101^NELL^FREDERICK^P^^DR|||||||||||V1002^^^ADT1|||||||||||||||||||||||||200004210950||||||||

Message Browser Window

• Click the Parse button to parse the sample message.
• Click the Table View tab, and click the Text View option.
• Examine the output. You will notice that all the output has been properly parsed.

Output Properly Parsed

Now that you have confirmed that one sample ADT message will be properly parsed, let's examine what happens when you use msgtransform to generate some sample output.