The Description file holdsthat describeAis used to give meaning to aand provide well-understood and standard ways of referring to a
Field | Data type | Immutable | Purpose | Part of Primary Key |
---|---|---|---|---|
id | Y | Uniquely identifies the | YES (Full/Snapshot) | |
N | Specifies the inclusive date at which the component version's state became the then current valid state of the component | YES (Full) Optional (Snapshot) | ||
N | Specifies whether the state of thewasorfrom the nominal release date specified by the effectiveTime . | NO | ||
N | Identifies theversion's module. Set to aof |Module| within the metadata | NO | ||
conceptId | Y | Identifies theto which thisapplies. Set to theof ain the |SNOMED CT Concept| within the Concept file. Note that a specific version of ais not directly bound to a specific version of theto which it applies. Which version of aapplies to adepends on its effectiveTime and the point in time at which it is accessed. | NO | |
languageCode | Y | Specifies theof thetext using the two character ISO-639-1 code. Note that this specifies alevel only, not aor country code. | NO | |
Y | Identifies whether theisaor othertype. This field is set to aof |Description type| in the Metadata | NO | ||
N | Theversion's text value, represented in UTF-8 encoding. | NO | ||
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 |Case significance| within the metadata | NO |
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 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 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 component will be inactivated (by appending a row with the same id and thefield set to false) and a another row will be added representing a new component with a new id. Only limited changes may be made to the term field, as defined by editorial rules.
Eachwill have at least onewith a typeId of |synonym| and at least onewith a typeId of |Fully specified name| .
Where aonly has onewith a typeId of |Fully specified name| across allcodes within a release, then thatcan be taken as thefor allandand need not be explicitly included in everyassociated with that release.
The term field will be restricted as follows:
- to an overall maximum length of 32Kb;
to a maximum length, configurable for eachas defined in the |Description format reference set| member associated with that- see the Description Format Reference Set specifications document for more details.
The |Description format reference set| also defined the format of the term field (plain text, limited HTML, XHTML) for each
Control characters (including TABs, CRs and LFs) will not appear in |Plain text| or |Limited HTML| format types.
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