RE: HL7 Standards Process (was RE: EDIINT and HIPAA)

Terry,

Thanks for the excellent explanation - I understand what you meant by
packaging now... However I still think there is
some room for differences between AS1 and AS2 packaging of the SAME
document. Suppose I want to send a JPEG image of a medical X-Ray.

Based on the IANA registration for the image/jpeg media type, ref:
http://www.isi.edu/in-notes/iana/assignments/media-types/image/jpeg

It states:

"Encoding considerations :

Image/jpeg objects consist of binary data.  A content-transfer-encoding of
"Binary" is strongly encouraged for messaging environments which
support binary transport.  A content-transfer-encoding of Base64 (and
the associated transformation) is strongly encouraged for messaging
environments that do not support binary transfer."

Because HTTP (and AS2) contain direct support for binary data the JPEG CAD
drawing can be packaged as pure binary. However, this same JPEG data, when
sent over SMTP (AS1) would most likely be base64 encoded and a
content-transfer-encoding header would be required.

Example of the same JPEG data packaged for AS2 and AS1:

AS2 PACKAGING		 	         AS1 PACKAGING
-------------------------------        ----------------------------------
Content-type: image/jpeg               Content-type: image/jpeg
						   Content-transfer-encoding: base64
[binary jpeg data here]
                                       [base64 encoded jpeg data here]



Dick Brooks
Group 8760
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[email protected]
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