The Eclipse-based IBM XForms Generator (http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/xfg) was used to automatically generate an GUI using a simple openEHR composition instance (contains a blood glucose level observation) and the openEHR XML Schemata (Release 1.0.1).
This is the result, without any manual tweaking: crude XForms GUI (compound document: XForms markup embedded in XHTML) and a supporting CSS style sheet.
The easiest way to view it is downloading both files plus the original composition and the openEHR XML Schemata to the same location and opening compositon.xhtml with the Firefox 2.0.x Browser that has the XForms extension installed.
Obviously this is very simple using only the xsd:string data type because the generator doesn't know the openEHR types, but it includes repeatable sections where the openEHR types have a "maxOccurs=unbounded" attribute. IBM uses this generator for initial scaffold GUIs from instance+/-schema data or WSDL documents. Here are two more interesting links:
- HL7 CDA demo (generator was used for initial scaffolding)
- tax form tutorial (explains how the generator was used)
It would be cool if we could in the mid-/longterm achieve a similar generator aimed specifically at openEHR, probably by adding some custom extensions to the standard (see http://xformsinstitute.com/essentials/browse/ch11.php). This could then be used both for generic GUIs and as starting point for customised XForms-based GUIs.
Comments (2)
08-Jul-2008
Tim Cook says:
Thanks for this work. I think it has good potential to inform futher...Thanks for this work. I think it has good potential to inform futher development.
I especially enjoyed the link to the CDA demo:
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Introduction
The purpose of this demonstration is to illustrate
an end-to-end exchange of XML data from an XForms
based browser to a DB2 database with full XML
support. We want to show you how quickly and easily
it is to create XForms documents and have them
talk to a DB2 database where XML instance data
can be stored, retrieved or further queried.
Let's Get Started
Select "Next" to proceed.
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Is it just something I'm missing or is there no "Next" on this page?
--Tim
17-Jul-2008
Yannick Smits says:
Tim you'll need the XForms plugin for Firefox 2.x (won't work with Firefox 3) to...Tim you'll need the XForms plugin for Firefox 2.x (won't work with Firefox 3) to be able to see the "Next" button.