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The v26 release adds deeper controls across HL7 transport, query behavior, schema governance, platform modernization, and high-volume ingestion—so interface teams can move faster with fewer workarounds.

Platform Update

• Modern .NET runtime — HL7Spy now runs on the modern, Core-based .NET platform, with current builds targeting .NET 10 for Windows.Benefit: Improved runtime performance, a stronger security posture with regular Microsoft security updates, and better alignment with modern enterprise deployment standards.
• Refreshed application data layout — User settings and application data have been migrated from Documents to AppData\Roaming, following current Windows conventions.Benefit: Cleaner separation between user documents and application state, and better compatibility with roaming profiles and managed desktops.

Features and Improvements

• Custom Code is now a full Plugin platform — The Custom Code tool has been rebuilt from the ground up. Highlights include:
  • Debug your plugins directly in Visual Studio.
  • A new Package Explorer tree for browsing and editing code and resource files inline.
  • Go to Definition with back/forward navigation across files.
  • Support for native assemblies and importing legacy custom-function XML.

  Benefit: A modern, IDE-grade development experience for building, debugging, packaging, and sharing custom functionality across your team. Learn more →

• New SET operations tool — Introducing “A ∩ B” for set-based message comparison and linking.
  Benefit: Quickly identify intersections and relationships across message sets. Learn more →
• HL7 Analytics ENTERPRISE ONLY — A new analytics tool, built on the DuckDB database, unlocks expanded SQL-style analysis scenarios that are fast and powerful.
  Benefit: Faster root-cause analysis when reconciling feeds, revisions, or parallel interfaces. Learn more →
• Schema governance built into the workflow ENTERPRISE ONLY — Manage HL7 2.x schema overrides directly in-app, including data type overrides, and apply schema packages in the message editor for schema-aware interpretation and troubleshooting.
  Benefit: More consistent field semantics across analysts and projects. Learn more →
• Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) tenant licensing ENTERPRISE ONLY — An Enterprise license model that binds licensing to your Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) tenant. Any user on a tenant-joined device can run HL7Spy without per-machine activation.
  Benefit: Simplified license management for cloud-identity organizations—no hardware-ID juggling for laptop refreshes, and automatic coverage for new team members as they join the tenant.
• Token-based license activation ENTERPRISE ONLY — A server-validated license model where each client periodically refreshes a short-lived token from the HL7Spy license server. Unattended activation is supported via the HL7SPY_LICENSEE and HL7SPY_LICENSEKEY environment variables.
  Benefit: Centralized license control—revoke or reassign licenses from the server without touching client machines, and activate cleanly in CI pipelines, containers, and other unattended environments.Requires: Each client machine must have network access to the HL7Spy license server to refresh its token.
• Transport flexibility in Send HL7 — Choose MLLP or HTTP on a per-target basis.Benefit: Better support for mixed modern and legacy endpoint ecosystems.
• Hardened HL7 receiving — The built-in HL7 server now offers stronger TLS certificate handling (with trusted-cert persistence), tightened ACK behavior, host validation, and interface deduplication.
  Benefit: More predictable, secure inbound connectivity for production-grade listeners.
• Expanded message framing options — New support for the original Cloverleaf framing and Cloverleaf Length-Encoded output framing, a redesigned UI for managing custom framings, and most built-in framings updated to UTF-8.
  Benefit: Easier interoperability with Cloverleaf-style endpoints and clearer control over how messages are framed on save and send.
• One-click Bug Report and Diagnostics upload — Package and send diagnostics directly to HL7Spy support from within the app.
  Benefit: Faster, more accurate support cases without manual log collection.
• Query execution tuning for large datasets — Optimized query performance when working with high message volumes.
  Benefit: Faster, more responsive analysis at scale.
• Richer HL7 SQL output and editor — Queries can now return multiple rows per message for repeating structures, SQL CASE statements are supported, a new TABLE expression function is available, and a new Query All Tabs workflow incrementally parses only newly added tabs. The editor also supports expand/collapse all regions and using ; to end a region.
  Benefit: Cleaner analytics for repeating fields, richer expression power, and a smoother authoring experience—without forcing flattening workarounds.
• More destination options in SQL Loader — Added providers for DuckDB and Snowflake (password and SSO variants).
  Benefit: Easier movement from HL7 analysis to downstream reporting and data-warehouse workflows.
• HL7 Field evolution visibility — Field History is now available in the HL7 Standard view, showing how a field has changed between versions of the HL7 Standard.
  Benefit: Quicker impact analysis during version upgrades and mapping updates.
• Multi-threaded remote file downloads — FTP, SFTP, AWS S3, and Azure Blob transfers now download files in parallel across multiple worker threads, with a configurable thread count per connection.
  Benefit: Dramatically faster downloads when pulling large batches of files—measured at up to 5× faster on AWS S3—turning multi-hour ingest windows into minutes.
• Message-type filtering in the Timeline tool — Specify which message type to display in the Timeline.
  Benefit: Clearer visualization of message flow and volume per message type.
• In-application “Check for Updates” — Check for and install the latest version directly from within HL7Spy.
  Benefit: Easier to keep your HL7Spy installation up to date.