Software Development Questions and Answers Flashcards
6 cards from real Epic Skills Assessment practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 Software Development Questions and Answers flashcards as text
What is the purpose of the HL7 (Health Level 7) standard in healthcare software?
Answer: To define messaging standards for exchanging clinical and administrative data between healthcare systems
HL7 is a set of international standards for the exchange, integration, sharing, and retrieval of electronic health information between clinical systems.
In object-oriented programming, what does 'encapsulation' mean?
Answer: Bundling data and methods that operate on that data within a single unit, and restricting direct access to some components
Encapsulation bundles data (attributes) and methods (functions) into an object, and restricts external access to internal details via access modifiers (public/private).
What is a 'race condition' in software development?
Answer: A bug where the system's behavior depends on the relative timing of events, like two processes accessing shared data simultaneously
A race condition occurs when multiple processes access and modify shared data concurrently, leading to unpredictable outcomes depending on execution order.
What does 'continuous integration' (CI) mean in software development?
Answer: Automatically building and testing code whenever a developer commits changes, enabling early detection of issues
CI automatically builds and runs tests whenever code is committed, catching integration problems early in the development cycle.
In a relational database, what is a 'foreign key'?
Answer: A field in one table that references the primary key of another table, establishing a link between tables
A foreign key creates a referential relationship between two tables — it holds the primary key value from a related record in another table.
What is the primary purpose of an 'interface engine' (like Mirth Connect or Epic's Integration Engine) in healthcare IT?
Answer: To translate, route, and transform health data messages between disparate systems
Interface engines receive messages from one system, transform them to the format required by the receiving system, and route them to their destination.