Re: Run-time name constraints and appropriate use of terminologies

[Ian McNicoll <Ian.McNicoll@oceaninformatics.com>]

PART 2 :

As about the other issue of as_string(), let me give you an example to express my concerns:
Lets suppose we have again hospital A residing in UK while B residing in NL. A is going to use CKM archetypes for ADDRESS, while B not, and lets suppose we have the following case/data for an address (I will only detail relevant fields)

... - other data

ADDRESS/details/items[at0002]/items[at0023]/value = 'MyHouseName'

ADDRESS/details/items[at0002]/items[at0028]/value = 'MyStreet'

ADDRESS/details/items[at0002]/items[at0029]/value = 100

ADDRESS/details/items[at0002]/items[at0031]/value = ' .... MyStreet 100 ...,  MyHouseName' -- address line

ADDRESS/details/items[at0004]/value = 'XYZ 123' -- zip

ADDRESS/details/items[at0005]/value = 'MyTown'

ADDRESS/details/items[at0007]/value = 'UK'

... - other data

So what you would expect from the as_string() is basically something like: 

MyHouseName

100 MyStreet

MyTown

XYZ 123

UK

which I guess is 'statically' implemented in the application used in A. As you can see the expected string might not be just a concatenated string of all values found in the object but rather a templated/formatted string. 

Now, if A is sending these data to B for further processing, then B requires the same archetype in order to parse/understand the data he got. Using local terminology (found in archetype) B can assign meaning to each of the node, but he cannot produce the same as_string() as he doesn't have the same knowledge as A. So he will probably produce a B-localized version of it. Is this enough or not? Is it really a problem or just weak in theory? - I don't know, but perhaps if we can capture the pattern in the archetype it will be better. This is why I was asking about this as_string().

If I can think of something like rules/assertions (although I'm not very familiar with them) in the cADL they can look similar to:

as_string: 

details/items[at0002]/items[at0023]/value + CRLF +

details/items[at0002]/items[at0029]/value +

details/items[at0002]/items[at0028]/value + CRLF +

details/items[at0005]/value +

details/items[at0007]/value

although I know this is not a valid cADL grammar. As I said, I'm not very familiar with the syntax, and I'm not sure how to use it afterwards - i.e. is the above going to assign an _expression_ to as_string() function? 

=============================================================================================

Discuss!!

Ian

Dr Ian McNicoll
office / fax  +44(0)141 560 4657
mobile +44 (0)775 209 7859

skype ianmcnicoll
ian.mcnicoll@oceaninformatics.com
ian@mcmi.co.uk

Clinical Analyst  Ocean Informatics
Honorary Senior Research Associate, CHIME, University College London

openEHR Archetype Editorial Group
Member BCS Primary Health Care SG Group www.phcsg.org / BCS Health Scotland

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