The Repositories/Health Data Repository (HDR) system encompasses a relational database, HDR Database (HDR DB), as well as Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Representational State Transfer (REST) standards-based web service interfaces for retrieving data from HDR DB or Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) or both HDR DB and VistA any time from within the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) intranet. The system also includes asynchronous Java Messaging Service (JMS) interfaces for storage of data to the HDR Database any time from within the VA intranet. The web services enable VistA federation and data aggregation when data is retrieved from VistA.
Repositories services include Clinical Data Service (CDS), Pathways, Aggregate Read Service (ARS), and the Federated Patient Data Service (FPDS). The services support accepting an optional Secure Assertion Markup Language 2.0 (SAML 2.0) token on the SOAP headers for SOAP services and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) headers for REST services. This functionality is ready for deployment when VistA foundation is complete. All services are based on a Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) framework and differ mainly in the data domains and exchange formats supported. CDS, Pathways, ARS and FPDS support Extensible Markup Language (XML) for data interchange. In addition to XML, FPDS also supports JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) for data interchange. JMS interfaces accept payload in Health Level Seven (HL7) format from CDS Socket Adapter and the VistA Interface Engine (VIE).
The service framework has been enhanced to support integrations with Enterprise Messaging Infrastructure (eMI) and includes integration with the eMI WebSphere Service Registry and Repository (WSRR) services and eMI messaging and routing services. The eMI WSRR service provides web service endpoint resolution to the HDR framework and replaced internally deployed Universal Description and Discovery Integration (UDDI) services. The eMI provides message routing capabilities as part of its Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) service that routes messages destined for the HDR to HDR service interfaces. Once all the VistA Data Extraction Framework (VDEF) links from VistA sites are updated to send data to eMI, the support for accepting VistA data through Vitria Interface Engine (VIE) and Socket Adapter will be phased out. Home Telehealth (HTH) clients will continue to send data to HDR through the Socket Adapter.