Conformance validation

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Objective: Clarify what these terms mean from a (schematron) validation perspective: Cardinality, Required, Mandatory, SHALL, Required if Known

Cardinality: The cardinality expresses the number of times an attribute or association may appear in a derived model or message. (Source: HL7 V3 "Refinement, Constraint and Localization" chapter).

Required: this is an HL7 term, that is probably close to IHE's "Required if Known". This does not imply a lower cardinality of 1. There's no way to validate this, because the field need not be sent if the value isn't known. (Source: HL7 V3 "Refinement, Constraint and Localization" chapter).

Mandatory: this is an HL7 term, which implies a lower cardinality of 1, and disallows NULL values. (Source: HL7 V3 "Refinement, Constraint and Localization" chapter).

SHALL (e.g. Document SHALL contain exactly one clinicalDocument/id): SHALL implies a lower cardinality of 1. SHALL doesn't disallow NULL values. If NULL values are to be excluded, this would have to be done by additional explicit conformance statement. (Source: RFC 2119, http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt).

Required if Known (e.g. clinicalDocument/id is Required if Known): Similar to Required (and can't be schematron-validated). (Equals RFC 2119 'RECOMMENDED')