Before you can create your VMD file and your channels, you must acquire some sample data. Here are some ways to acquire this data:

• Obtain messages from the originator by email;
• Use the HL7 Listener to listen on a network port, retrieve HL7 messages, and log them to a text file;
• Use some of the sample messages provided with Chameleon.

In this tutorial, you will be using the third option: you will be using messages.txt as the sample data for your application. This file is included with Chameleon. To use this file:

• Go to the directory in which you have installed Chameleon (for example, C:\Program Files\iNTERFACEWARE\Chameleon).
• Copy messages.txt from this directory to a test directory of your choice.

	If you cannot locate messages.txt in your installation directory, you can use this link to obtain a copy of it: messages.txt.