Understanding Business Services

Virtual directories

Access to the Business Services is configured through a URL that uses an HTTP or HTTPS protocol. For details, refer to Protocols for Business Services and image access.

All Business Services reside in one of five virtual directories on the Application Server. The virtual directories for IMPAX Business Services are:

• AgfaHC.Pacs

• AgfaHC.Ris

• AgfaHC.User

• AgfaHC.User.Administration

• AgfaHC.User.Security

All services in one virtual directory must point to the same hostname. For example, the following two AgfaHC.Pacs services point to the same application server:

• https://appserver1/AgfaHC.Pacs.web.services/worklistmetadataservice.ashx

• https://appserver1/AgfaHC.Pacs.web.services/pixeldataservice.ashx

Load balancing

Load balancing is the process of distributing network traffic across a set of server machines to achieve greater performance and availability. By defining access to Business Services through load balancing applications (which may or may not be tied to specific hardware) or through different IMPAX Application Servers, you can provide load balancing capabilities to your system.

With a load balancer

If you have purchased a load balancer, you can configure access to the Business Services through that load balancer, which then distributes the load for you. For example:

• http://loadbalancer1/AgfaHC.Pacs.web.services/worklistmetadataservice.ashx

Normally, all Business Services would be accessed through a single load balancer.

Without a load balancer

If you are working without a load balancer, you can still gain some of the benefits of load balancing by placing different Business Services on different Application Servers and defining their access accordingly. For example, you can centralize all AgfaHC.User, AgfaHC.User.Administration, and AgfaHC.User.Security Business Services on one Application Server that all stations in the system use. The rest of the services could be in another set of application servers that are used by a specific set of stations. When setting up this kind of configuration, you would configure each station container so that the AgfaHC.User, AgfaHC.User.Administration, and AgfaHC.User.Security Business Services all point to the same location.

Security and performance

To enforce security, you can customize how different stations access the Business Services. For example, stations outside the hospital can be organized into one or more station containers that access the IMPAX Business Services using a specific server and host using the secure https protocol.

Also note the following security-related items:

• The Business Services that handle password information—UserAdminWebService and LoginWebService—must use the https protocol.

• If you do not change the URLs used to access the Business Services, the system defaults are used.

• The URLs for the web services that control logging into the Client cannot be changed: AgfaHC.User.Security.Web.Services/Login.asmx and WindowsAuthentication/Login.asmx.

• Access to images can be through the Pixel Data Service (https://appserver1/AgfaHC.Pacs.web.services/pixeldataservice.ashx) or through aspftp. Refer to Determining how images are accessed.

For a full description of all available Business Services, refer to "Web services index" (topic number 11408) in the IMPAX 6.5.1 Application Server Knowledge Base.