Re: [codelist] Code Relationship

["Anthony B. Coates (Miley Watts)" <abcoates@mileywatts.com>]

Renato, this is not something we have discussed in detail.  The closest  
thing is that there is a possible genericode 3.0 requirement to support  
multiple codes in a list for the same item.

Personally, I have two comments adding relationships like this between  
codes:

* if you start adding relationships between codes, where do you stop?  If  
you allow arbitrary relationships between codes, are you starting to  
re-invent RDF/OWL?  I'm not suggesting that this requirement is  
unimportant, or anything like that, only that it might require a different  
standard, and there is a question as to what that standard would be (since  
once people start building RDF/OWL relationships between things, it can be  
hard to set boundaries on what they should or shouldn't do).  [I know  
you've been in the RDF game a long time Renato, so by all means tell us  
what you would do.]

* the current plan is for version 2.0 of genericode to add support for  
generation of new code lists based on a set of input code lists and a set  
of derivation rules.  Things like adding associations between codes, which  
are straightforwards in a purely static code list model, are tricky when  
you have derived code lists, because you need to be able to specify how  
such associations are added, removed, or modified.  For this reason, if we  
do consider adding support for such relationships, I think we need to put  
it off to genericode 3.0.

In the short term (genericode 1.0), anyone who needs this information can  
create a complex-valued (XML-valued) column in their code list, where the  
XML contains a list of suitably related codes.  This is currently the only  
way to introduce multi-valued data (i.e. where a single value in a row can  
be replaced by an array of values) into genericode code lists, although  
that is also a possible future requirement, and a possible way to  
represent some kinds of associations.

Cheers, Tony.

On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 04:42:11 +0100, Renato Iannella <renato@nicta.com.au>  
wrote:

> [I apologise if this has been discussed  via the teleconferences in
> the past...]
>
> In looking at the current draft spec, I was wondering if there would
> be support
> for defining the relationships between some of the codes.
>
> In particular, some common relationships like: "related-term",
> "broader-term", "narrower-term"
>
> I could not see this mentioned in the Requirements document either.
>
> Cheers...  Renato Iannella
> NICTA

-- 
Anthony B. Coates
Senior Partner
Miley Watts LLP
Experts In Data
+44 (79) 0543 9026
Data standards participant: genericode, ISO 20022 (ISO 15022 XML),  
UN/CEFACT, MDDL, FpML, UBL.
http://www.mileywatts.com/