If you are thinking of using Chameleon to implement your HL7 interface, you might want to consider using Iguana instead. Iguana smoothly and efficiently handles many common HL7 interface problems that might not be immediately apparent - and at no extra cost to you, as an Iguana license is priced the same as a Chameleon license.

For example, if you are planning on implementing an LLP client that sends messages over LLP to an external application, Iguana provides the following capabilities, which would require considerable effort to implement from scratch:

• The ability to retry sending a message if a connection problem is detected
• Detailed logging support, including filtering, the ability to view dumps in hexadecimal format, very fast log searching, and log exporting
• An extensive permissions model which enables control over who has access to the Iguana logs
• The ability to monitor incoming and outgoing messages, including customizable rules-driven email notification, customized script monitoring, and external monitoring
• IPv6 address support
• Secure sockets (SSL) support
• The ability to resubmit messages to either the same channel or a different one
• The ability to route messages from one channel to another
• Support for a variety of transport mechanisms and locations, such as files, HTTP connections and FTP
• Built-in support for most commonly used databases
• Support for connections to passive LLP clients
• Web services connectivity
• The ability to transmit messages in any format, including XML and HL7 version 3

Using Iguana instead of Chameleon can save your team months of development time. And, since Chameleon is included with Iguana, all of Chameleon's parsing and mapping options are available if you need them.

The following is a list of common objections that are raised when people are considering using Iguana:

• We don't want the overhead of running an entire separate process. Iguana has a very low CPU and memory footprint, as it is a highly optimized application written in C++.
• We don't want the additional risk and complexity that Iguana would impose. Iguana is a rock-solid proven HL7 integration engine that is widely deployed.
• Iguana has too many features. As a user, you only need to use a small subset of Iguana's features. Most fields defined in Iguana channels have useful default settings that do not need to be changed.
• We are looking for a low-cost solution. Iguana and Chameleon have the same licensing price: although Iguana is a much more powerful solution, Iguana's monitoring tools and robustness ensure that Iguana is much less expensive to support than one-off implementations created with Chameleon.
• We have an existing legacy application that would be too difficult to integrate with Iguana. Integrating the Iguana plugin API into an application is as easy as adding TCP/IP LLP support to the application. The Iguana plugin API operates over TCP/IP but is much more reliable than the various LLP implementations in the marketplace. Your application does not even have to be on the same machine as Iguana.

For more information on Iguana and on how you can use it to efficiently generate an HL7 messaging solution, see Iguana Overview. For details on how Iguana works, see Installing and Using Iguana.