3.2.2. Description File Specification

The Description file holdsthat describe. Ais used to give meaning to aand provide well-understood and standard ways of referring to a.

Table 10. Description file - Detailed Specification
Field	Data type	Immutable	Purpose
id	SCTID (data type)	Y	Uniquely identifies the.
effectiveTime (field)	Time (data type)	N	Specifies the inclusive date at which the component version's state became the then current valid state of the component
active (field)	Boolean (data type)	N	Specifies whether the's state wasorfrom the nominal release date specified by the effectiveTime (field) .
moduleId (field)	SCTID (data type)	N	Identifies theversion's module. Set to aof 900000000000443000 \|Module\| within the metadata.
conceptId	SCTID (data type)	Y	Identifies theto which thisbelongs. Set to anof ain the 138875005 \|SNOMED CT Concept\| within the Concept file. Note that versions ofanddon't belong to each other. Which version of any givenis combined with which version of its owningdepends on the point in time at which they are accessed.
languageCode	String (data type)	Y	Specifies theof thetext using the two character-639-1 code. Note that this specifies alevel only, not aor country code.
typeId (field)	SCTID (data type)	Y	Identifies whether theis an FSN,or othertype. This field is set to aof 900000000000446008 \|Description type\| in the Metadata.
term	String (data type)	N	Theversion's text value, represented in UTF-8 encoding.
caseSignificanceId (field)	SCTID (data type)	N	Identifies theenumeration value that represents the case significance of thisversion. For example, the term may be completely case sensitive, case insensitive or initial letter case insensitive. This field will be set to aof 900000000000447004 \|Case significance\| within the metadata.

Only onerecord with the same id field will be current at any point in time. The current record will be the one with the most recent effectiveTime (field) before or equal to the point in time under consideration.

If thefield of this record is false ('0'), then theisat that point in time. If thefield is true ('1'), then theis associated with theidentified by the conceptId field.

The conceptId field, the languageCode field and the typeId (field) field will not change between two rows with the same id, in other words they are immutable. Where a change is required to one of these fields, then the current row will be de-activated (by appending a row with the same id and thefield set to false) and a new row with a new id will be appended. Only limited changes may be made to the ' term ' field, as defined by editorial rules.

Eachwill have at least onewith a typeId (field) of || for a given languageCode (like "en"). Where aonly has onewith a typeId (field) of || for a givencode, then thatcan be taken as thefor thatand each of its, and need not therefore be explicitly included infor that. Where aonly has onewith a typeId (field) of || across allcodes within a release, then thatcan be taken as thefor alland, and need not therefore be explicitly included in anyin that release.

The term (field) field will be restricted as follows:

to an overall maximum length of 32Kb;
to a maximum length, configurable for eachtype (as defined by theTypemember associated with thattype - see the Description Format Reference Set specifications document for more details.
The format of the term field (plain text, limited HTML, XHTML,) will also be configurable for eachtype, using the same mechanism as above;
Control characters (including TABs, CRs and LFs) will not appear in |Plain text| and |Limited HTML| format types.

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3.2.2. Description File Specification