AquilaCRS Pre-requisites

This is a Technical (IT) Instructions topic

Target Audience

These instructions are of a technical nature & intended for trust level IT staff & requires experience of:

• MS SQL Server - creating databases and running scripts,
• TCP/IP - Installation and configuration of windows services, TCP/IP ports and firewall configuration

Overview

There are 3 steps to installing and setting up your iBID software:

• Create the Database
• Install the Application Server
• Run the BIBID Data Transfer and upload to the National Database

PRE-REQUISITES

MS SQL Server 2005 or later

The AquilaCRS (IBID) application server requires an MS SQL Server 2005 or later database. The app server supports SQL Server Express editions or above, and requires one of the SQL Server x86 or x64 Native Client drivers to be installed on the application server machine:

The database connection method is TCP/IP. In the case where SQL Express is installed, the TCP/IP protocol must be enabled and ports correctly configured for each IP address.

The application server (AquilaServer) will require it's own SQL Server username/password to access the database.

Physical or Virtual Server

AquilaCRS (IBID) is a multiple tier database and as such the application server component needs a server machine (either physical or virtual, shared or dedicated) on which to reside.

The database will be hosted either on a SQL Server that will be present within the trust already or as a dedicated SQL Server installation on it's own server, or on the same server as the app-server software component.

The application server component can co-exist with other systems and will happily co-exist with the existing BIBID server installation, so it is possible to re-use an existing server.

All 3 application layers can be installed on a single PC, but we do not recommend this as patient-level data needs to be stored in secure environment.

EHS do not support the installation of the application server component on client PC's for bandwidth, performance and software update reasons.

• The server machine can be physical or virtual.
• Running server editions of Windows, version 2003 or later.
• Minimum RAM 4Gb
• Requires 4Gb free disk space (estimated data transfer and future years database size)
• App Server requires ~50Mb free disk space

End User Application: Installation

The AquilaCRS (ibid) end user application is released as a "per-user" installation. This means each user needs to install their own copy. The installation is released as a ZIP file on the www.ibidb.org. Each user needs to have permissions to download this file.

End User Application: Automatic Updates

The AquilaCRS program is automatically updated on a regular basis for

• release of new field options
• security patches
• user requests
• bug fixes

In order for the automatic updates to work the following must be adhered to:

1. the AquilaCRS program files must be installed in a user-writeable folder.
2. the URL of the automatic update web service must not be blocked.  The domain name for the automatic update service is www.nbid.org.

For more information on writeable folders that are shared between users, please read the Shared writeable folders.

Web Services

AquilaCRS uses some web services for accessing updated data items (e.g. drop down list contents), for registering iBID systems & for accessing automatic software updates. The following domains need adding to the whitelist on your firewall/proxy server in order to prevent system failures:

1. [1] - the current base URL for the National Database.
2. www.NBID.org - for software updates and URL's for National Database connectivity.
3. www.EvolutionHealthcareSystems.co.uk - for bug reporting, help files and helpdesk systems.