>It's really easy to parse, compresses nicely, and is quite flexible in terms of schema It fine in modern languages with good string parsing tools but if you h

>It's really easy to parse, compresses nicely, and is quite flexible in terms of schema It fine in modern languages with good string parsing tools but if you have a v2 parser using simpler techniques in something that's difficult to debug with, it can be a nightmare when something goes slightly wrong. I'm not a fan of how we did it, but it has worked for 95% of cases and was coded in 1999, so I can't really complain all that much. Part of the struggle is massaging message parses where a vendor is doing something slightly differently (or very terribly, like adding the lab's director on every fucking OBX segment as if the director will get fired mid-HL7 message and we gotta know about it).