This page is used to analyze messages received from an outside source. The message is parsed and the values presented in hierarchical fashion for viewing. It also offers a reverse engineering feature which allows you to derive the message specification from the message instance.
Get Message File - Click this button to browse for a file that contains the text of a message. Alternatively, message text may be pasted into the message text edit window. The text should include a carriage return (hex 0D,dec 13) at the end of each segment as per the HL7 specification, however the parser will automatically insert them as long as each segment appears on a separate line of the text.
Parse Message - Click this button to parse the message in the message text window. When parsing is completed, the derived message structure is displayed in the window below, and the message parse tree is populated. Check the Consolidate Repeat Segments to have repeating segments or segment groups represented once but enclosed in braces. Un check it if you want each instance of the repeating elements to appear in the message structure.
Click on the View Message Characteristics button to view message parameters derived principally from the MSH segment of the message. Message and event types, encoding characters etc. are displayed.
Click the Clear Message button to erase all capture fields.
Derive Specification - Clicking this button causes a new specification to be generated based upon the derived message structure and message values. Each of the values in the parse tree is also defaulted as the element's Example value in the specification. The page is automatically changed to the Message Specification page.
Message Parse Tree - The message parse tree shows a hierarchical representation of the message and its constituent elements. As you can see from the illustration, each element type (seg,field,component, subcomponent) has a different colored folder. Values are represented by page icons (white color indicates null value, dark page indicates a value present for this element). A numeric path is indicated for each element. Optionally, dragging the mouse over the tree elements will display the element name if a specification has been derived.