Publishing Package Artifact Definition

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Publishing Package

Alternate considerations for the title include:

• Publication Package
• Publishing Grouper
• Publication Grouper

Definition and Purpose

A mechanism by which to define a package that organizes and documents a set of SAIF artifacts for publication. Its purpose is to support balloting and distribution of specifications using SAIF artifacts, and includes a means of documenting the package itself, over and above the documentation inherent in each of the artifacts that it is packaging. The packaging occurs by reference to SAIF artifacts that are stored elsewhere. The package is not a "container."

SAIF Matrix Location

This artifact is "Level-independent" because it is may be used to package artifacts at any level. Row(s)

• Conceptual (CIM)
• Logical (PIM)
• Implementable (PSM)

Column(s)

• Enterprise/Business
• Information
• Computational
• Engineering
• Technical

Audience

Briefly, publication packages may be assembled for any target audience.

Health Care Community Audiences:

• General public
• Health care practitioners
• Health system administrators
• Health care policy makers

Health Care Information Technology (IT) Audiences:

• System designers and architects
• System purchasers
• Programmers/implementers
• System vendor management

Applicability

This artifact provides a convenient way to assemble and document artifacts for publication. Therefore it will be created wherever and whenever a Work Group, project team, or HL7 publishers wish to publish SAIF artifacts for whatever purpose.

Rationale: Is designed as an aid for publication and will be core vehicle for the HL7 publishing software.

Requirements, Relationships and Content

1. Provide a means for uniquely identifying the package to be published.
   1. Rationale Seems obvious.
2. Provide a means to "include", by reference, a specific SAIF artifact, or an identifiable sub-component of that artifact for publication.
   1. Rationale The purpose is to publish SAIF artifacts and doing it by reference allows multiple such packages to include a given artifact without having to alter the content of the artifact itself. In some cases, it may be useful to, for example, include a single identified "class" from an information model.
3. Provide a means for grouping (a sub-package, if you will) artifact references or other groups within the package.
   1. Rationale Such grouping allows the package to have a hierarchical structure (chapters, sections, etc. in order to facilitate understanding of the content.
4. Provide ability to add documentation (with mark-up) that precedes and follows each group and reference in the package, including the package itself.
   1. Rationale Anticipate the need for "preceding" and "following" text that supplements the information in the components themselves.
5. Include contextual data such as copyrights, authorship, responsibility, etc. to support publication.
   1. Rationale Handle the meta-data for the publication itself.

Relationships and traceability

• Each "publishing package" may "replace" or be replaced by other "publishing package(s)".
  • Rationale: Permit tracing sequence of such packages.
• Each "publishing package" SHALL have one or more "item references" to SAIF artifacts all, or part, of whose definitions will be "included" in the package. (Note that this may include reference to other publishing packages, as well.)
  • Rationale: Core relationship defined in requirement 2, above.

Artifact types that may or must relate to this artifact types:

• ANY SAIF Artifact Type may be referenced for inclusion in such a package.

Content

• Publishing package identifier - Data to uniquely identify this package.

• Package meta-data - Information on copyrights, authorship, etc.

• Package annotations - Material such as a preface or appendices for the package.

• Content item (0..*) - A reference to a SAIF artifact (or part thereof) for inclusion:.
  • Item preceding text - Marked-up text to precede the item

  • Item reference (1..1) - A direct reference to a SAIF Artifact or to an identifiable element in that artifact

  • Item following text - Marked-up text to follow the item

• Content group (0..*) - A group of elements for inclusion.
  • Group preceding text - Marked-up text to preced the group

  • Defined Group the things that make up this group and may include:
    • Another "Content group" (0..*) or

    • A "Content item" (0..*)

Artifact Technology

Instances of this artifact type will be created, maintained and used as a file that conforms to the HL7 Model Interchange Format (MIF).

The underlying technology (as of April 2011) is:

• HL7 Publication Database (Access) plus XSLT Transforms - As noted in the technology section of the Domain Artifacts definition, the content and structure of the artifacts fopr a particular domain is captured in that domain's publication database (Access). The publishing process takes the XML extract of that content and transforms it to define an instance of "Publishing Package" for that domain for use in a ballot or Normative Edition.

• XML-editor of choice with no special support for reviewing markup except by rapid transform to "final form", which is available through current V3 Publishing Tools.

Rationale

• The whole of the HL7 specification management and publication process is based on the notion of producing "processable" content files in MIF that can be used to publish the ballot. The publishing package is central to publishing, and such artifacts are created automatically during that process.

Content Constraints

1. "Item references" used in these files must be complete references to the MIF "package location" for the artifact in question, and references to specific content in the model (if any) SHALL be an "XPath" statement pointing to the element in question.
   1. Rationale: MIF specification.
2. Textual markup in the documentation sections of the publishing package must conform to the xHtml sub-set distributed with the HL7 MIF Schemas
   1. Rationale: MIF specification.

Publishing Representation(s)

1. These packages are used by the V3 Publishing Tools to manage and create the published displays of HL7 content.
   1. Rationale: Primary vehicle for structuring published content.
2. Documentation included in thsi package is rendered as HTML