VCM 2005 May

The VCM meeting was held May 12-15, 2005 in Seattle, Washington.

Primary outcome of the meeting

• Software Life Cycle changes
• Development Standards Documentation
• Shift to Software Classes 2
• Need for Certification and Verification
  • Quality goes before Schedule
• Discussion of Software Licenses
  • General Public License
  • Apache Public License
• Telehealth and Telemedicine HUI has turned over custodianship to WorldVistA
• VPE Development Responsibility transferred by David Bolduc to Brian Lord
• Initial creation of Subversion repository by Jeff Abbott
  • Exporting non-routine Package elements

Standards Documentation

Software Classes

• Class 1 : Developed by Office of Information
  • verified, meets VA Standards
• Class 2 : Developed by VistA Community outside of VA
  • verified, meets or exceeds VA Standards
• Class 3 : Innovation by Local developers
  • unverified

Certification of Individuals

• Certified VistA Verifiers
• Certified Developer Process (similar to those of the Sofware Engineering Institute of Carnegie Mellon University CMU SEI)

Discussion of Software Licenses

The toolset used will support for General Public License & Apache License

Subversion Repository

• Subversion provides version tracking
• Subversion only tracks text.
  • Package elements need to have a text form
    • Discussion of XML format such as that created by
      • Art Smith for his PhD
      • Kevin Toppenberg for his Automated Configuration Script

Future Plans

• Rule based installation process. Developer may mark a patch as not doing anything nonstandard, thus allowing for automatic installation.