ActRelationship priorityNumber and other sequencing

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Recommendation for HL7 RIM Change	RECOMMENDATION ID:
Submitted by: Gunther Schadow	Revision (# and date): 2
Date submitted: 20050212	Committee status: open
Submitted by: Gunther Schadow
NAME: ActRelationship.priorityNumber (and other numbers)

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)
O&O	Unknown	I
RCRIM	Unknown	I
PC	Unknown	I

Issue

It is impossible to interpolate a new act-relationship with a different priorityNumber without requiring renumbering of all other relationships in that group.

Current State

Currently priorityNumbers is an INT.

Recommendation(s)

Change ActRelationship.priorityNumber to REAL

Rationale

Allows insertion of acts, reordering of priorities without requiring renumbering all the relationships. Priority numbers are often considered fractional, for example, in XSLT they are real numbers, and it is very useful.

Alternatives/Workarounds Considered

Currently workaround is to assign priorityNumbers in larger increments (e.g., 1000) which should leave enough room for insertions, but that would not represent the intent of priorityNumbers.

Discussion

May need to revise definition of priorityNumber and sequenceNumber to clarify the meaning and use of either. According to this proposal, sequenceNumber would stay INT

Recommended Action Items

• Implement the proposed solution