When the owner of a reference set wants to end support for the reference set, this should be indicated by making the changes described in the process section below.
In the situation where the reference set belongs to an extension, the owner of the extension may only make these changes to a reference set that is currently in an extension module for which it is responsible. The exception to that rule is that, in the case where a responsibility for maintenance of a reference set is transferred to another organization, the organization to which responsibility is transferred is required to take some of these steps.
Prior to ending support for a reference set, it is important that the reference set producer has an overview of the extent to which the reference set is used. If a producer and owner of a reference set continues to distribute an unsupported reference set with active members, there is an inherent risk that it will continue to be used. However, deprecation formally inactivates the references set members to mim this possibility.
The table below provides details and considerations on the process of inactivating a reference set.
|
If the extension producer wants to avoid users from needing to import a deprecated or transferred reference set in future releases, the inactivated reference set may be separated from the main extension release (e.g. it could be in a separate release package, or accessible via a separate service or from a static location). Changes in packaging must be formally notified to users of the extension in advance of the change.
It is essential that the inactive reference set concept, metadata and reference set members are included in the first release of the original release package after the changes are made. Otherwise users applying delta updates will not be aware that the change has been made. |