Harmonization: turn ParameterItem.semanticsText into a mandatory attribute

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Recommendation for HL7 RIM Change	RECOMMENDATION ID:
Submitted by: INM	Revision (# and date): 20060416
Date submitted:	Committee status: neither Discussed nor Approved
Submitted by: Rene Spronk
NAME: turn ParameterItem.semanticsText into a mandatory attribute

Stewards Position

REQUIRED - This table should contain one row for each Steward Committee affected by the recommendation.

TC	RECOMMENDATION APPROVAL STATUS	AFFECTED ENTITIES OF INTEREST TO TC (responsibility level: S=Steward; I=Interested)
INM	Under review	S

Issue

The parameterItem RIM class is defined to be a key/value pair. The v3 design principle states that when it comes to the interpretation of RIM-derived models one should be able to derive the full semantics of the model without having to look at the names of cloned classes.

• Queries as defined by committees quite often contain parameterItem clones without a semanticsText attribute. This way a value is conveyed without an underlying key.

Recommendation(s)

• Change parameterItem.semanticsText into a mandatory attribute.
• Enforce with the aid of tooling (upon model validation) that a fixed value is assigned to this attribute.

Backwards compatibility: there are no backwards compatibility issues. Those able to process the old (erroneous) queries [there are some that have already gone normative] will certainly be able to process the new queries (with semanticsText).

Rationale

All paremeterItem derived classes have to have the semanticsText attribute with a predefined (default) value. The only circumstance where a parameterItem-clone would not have to have semanticsText is a query that has only 1 parameterItem.

The RIM states that parameterItem is a name-value pair. SemanticsText contains the "name" part of the name-value pair. See the "Link between parameterItem and RIM attributes" section of the Query Parameters Wiki page for a discussion on how to define the semantics associated with a parameter.

Note that although widely used by implementers of XML v3 Interactions, the name of the class-clone does not carry any semantic meaning and therefore can't be used (in abstract models, like R-MIMs) to distinguish between one parameterItem clone and another one. Using the className is XML ITS specific.

Recommended Action Items

• Implement the proposed solution