Extensions Practical Guide

Search

SNOMED CT Document Library

    Loading...

Page tree

Versions Compared

Old Version 4

changes.mady.by.user David Markwell

Saved on

compared with

New Version 5

changes.mady.by.user David Markwell

Saved on

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

Purpose

There are a number of reasons for modifying a relationship in an extension, including: 

  • Changing the status of the relationship from active to inactive, or from inactive to active
  • Changing the relationship group of a specific relationship
  • Changing the characteristic type of a relationship

Principles

Relationships that are used to define extension concepts can be modified. However, please note that only the values of mutable attributes may be modified. As indicated in 

Caption reference
CapRefIdmutability-of-relationship-attributes
CapRefTypeTable
, the six mutable attributes of a relationship are: effectiveTime, active, moduleId, relationshipGroup, characteristicTypeId, and modifierId. When a change is required to the source, destination or type of the relationship, the relationship must be inactivated and a new relationship created with the required values.

All modifications to a SNOMED CT relationship should also conform to the SNOMED CT concept model rules, including relationship group cardinality constraints. For more information please refer to the Editorial Guide and the Machine Readable Concept Model.

Relationships authored by SNOMED International, which define concepts in the International Edition, should not be modified. If an error is detected in the International Edition, which requires one or more relationships to be modified, the issue should be documented and reported to SNOMED International using the  Content Request Service. In situations in which an extension producer needs to modify a relationship to temporarily fix an issue, this should be done in a module owned by the extension producer, and reported to SNOMED International It is recommended that extension producers try to avoid modifying international relationships, as such modifications may affect the results of subsumption testing and therefore may have an impact on cross-edition interoperability.

Caption label
CapIdmutability-of-relationship-attributes
CapTypeTable
Mutability of relationship attributes

Bookmarked content insert
Startfilespec
PageREUSE:Relationship File


Process

The table below provides a summary of the process to follow when modifying a relationship in an extension.

File TypeProcess
Stated Relationship or Relationship



A new row which represents a new version of the modified relationship is added to the respective relationship file.

The attributes of the new version of the relationship are set as follows:

  • id is set to the relationshipId of the relationship being modified
  • effectiveTime is set to the date the extension will be published
  • active is set to '1' to indicate that the new version of the relationship will be active at the time of publication

  • moduleId is set to identify a module concept from the extension

  • sourceId is set to the same as the original version of the relationship
  • destinationId is set to the same as the original version of the relationship
  • relationshipGroup is set to the updated relationship group number (or the original number if no update is required)
  • typeId is set to the same as the original version of the relationship
  • characteristicTypeId is set to the updated value (or the original value if no update is required)
  • modifierId is set to the updated value (or the original value if no update is required)