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Re: DADL optional rm-type


Bert Verhees wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I wrote another message before, earlier this week, but that was 
> addresses to 
> the Java-list, but I now think it is a problem of specification.
> ------------------
> I want to know, is it in all cases possible to guess the rm-type in a 
> dadl-
> construct? I ask this, because the specification says:
>
> -------------------
> http://www.openehr.org/releases/1.0.1/architecture/am/adl.pdf (page 
> 23)
> The basic design principle of dADL is to be able to represent data in 
> a way 
> that is both machineprocessible and human readable, while making the 
> fewest 
> assumptions possible about the information model to which the data 
> conforms. 
> To this end, type names are optional; often, only attribute names
> and values are explicitly shown.
> -------------------
>
> This spec worries me, because in my opinion, the "guessing" routine 
> for an rm-
> type is hard to write efficient (it contains loops, and will use many 
> CPU when 
> processing large amounts of data).
> What is more, is it safe? 
> I say this because, some attributes are optional, maybe there can be 
> more rm-
> types which can be found with a certain attribute.
>
> Example:
> I am thinking about DV_TEXT, it only has one required attribute, 
> called 
> "value".
> This is also the case for most ID-classes, like HierObjectID. How can 
> a DADL-
> rprocessing routine know what kind of rm-type must be stored?
>
>   

Bert,

in these cases the type name is needed. It can be left out if your 
software knows a priori what kind of object a given dADL text is, e.g. 
an archetype parser knows that the dADL at the top of an archetype is 
an 
instance of RESOURCE_DESCRIPTION, so it can proceed on this basis, even 
though we don't include any typename in the archetype.

- thomas


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