Stream: conformance
Topic: Microservices
Grahame Grieve (Nov 18 2016 at 10:08):
Yesterday, we saw a presentation here at DevDays where the implementer was implementing 'microservices'. For him, that meant that given a specific activity, the server would create a particular end--point. e,g. [base]/ActivityDefinition/[id]/[otherid]/
Grahame Grieve (Nov 18 2016 at 10:09):
from that end point, you could access /metadata. WHat you would get back would be highly context specific - it would tell a client exactly what it could do in this particular context
Grahame Grieve (Nov 18 2016 at 10:10):
For me, this raised a couple of questions
- is there any path restrictions or documentation we can provide about where to put these microservices to be conformant
- there is no way to indicate in a capabilities statement what the implicit context is. Should there be?
Josh Mandel (Nov 18 2016 at 10:15):
Not sure I understand this question. How does this relate to FHIR's Operations framework? What does "implicit context" for a capability statement mean?
Alexander Henket (Nov 19 2016 at 17:10):
I guess that if you could get the CapabilityStatement from any endpoint, not just the [base], then it becomes relevant where you got it relative to the base?
I must say that I also don't see why microservices could not be expressed using Operations.
If you create pseudo resources that are actually services, they run a risk of name clashing with future actual resources.
Grahame Grieve (Nov 19 2016 at 17:15):
It's a different thing to operations - a microservice is a fully fledged FHIR service with it's own capability statement, not just another operation in some broad service. It might define it's own operation but the point is that it will expose a bunch of services, some of them existing FHIR interactions, and some of them fhir or custom operations.
Grahame Grieve (Nov 19 2016 at 17:16):
Josh - implicit context - the microservice provides a set of operations that can be performed for a given workflow. In a sense, it's equivalent to an application launch context in Smart-on-fhir, except taht instead of making it an explicit parameter, you just expect that it's somehow implied in the URL of the FHIR server given to the smart app
Grahame Grieve (Nov 19 2016 at 17:17):
Except that the smart app, the parameter may be available for introspection, but not in an implicit context in a micro-service
Josh Mandel (Nov 20 2016 at 21:56):
I'm still not sure of the overall use case, but we're overloading the word "microservices" in a way that's contributing to my confusion.
Grahame Grieve (Nov 21 2016 at 05:39):
yes, probably. Any suggestions for other terms?
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
