Hi everyone!

This spreadsheet Sebastian mentioned, " spread sheet with some cases to decide 
what is a major, minor, patch change…", is that available? We're in the making 
of such a list in Norwegian, and experienced difficulties to differ among the 
severity of implications of the changes.

This is definitely a interesting topic to examine more – synchronized version 
updates of archetypes among all EHRs will never happen for sure…



Kind regards,
Vebjørn Arntzen

Enterprise Architect, RN
Coordinator, National Editorial Board for Archetypes
Nasjonal IKT HF, Norway
Tel. +47 41437589
Web: http://arketyper.no<http://arketyper.no/> / Twitter: 
@arketyper_no<https://twitter.com/arketyper_no>



Fra: openEHR-clinical [mailto:[email protected]] På 
vegne av Ian McNicoll
Sendt: 16. november 2017 13:01
Til: For openEHR clinical discussions; [email protected]
Emne: Re: AW: Versioning of archetypes: Minor or major changes?

Hi silje

I think we have always been clear that the definitions of major minor and patch 
only ever applied to the techicalities of path handling and data compatibility. 
I have always made it clear that minor changes may carry A whole range of 
potential clinical risk, your examples being quite correct.

The problem there is that it is simply not possible for archetype or even 
template developers to know whether these changes represent an s tual risk.

My approach would always be to assume that any minor change could induce risk 
and have it cliniccsly reviews before deployment

I ian
On 16 Nov 2017 at 11:31, <Sebastian 
Garde<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi Silje,

From my point of view, we need to differentiate between technical necessary 
version increments and clinically necessary ones.
In CKM, we have tried to implement the technically necessary version increment, 
which can always be increased by the clinician modeller.
In that sense the technically suggested version increment is a minimum 
increment, but you can always opt to go higher.

Now, we seem to have a different idea about what technically necessary means 
and indeed it is very complex (and I don’t think one is necessary better, just 
different, as it depends on what you want to use the major version for). A 
while ago, Thomas, Ian and I tried to fill in a spread sheet with some cases to 
decide what is a major, minor, patch change…let’s say the differences, at least 
initially, were high.

My main criteria for the technical level would be whether it is technically 
guaranteed that data recorded using the old archetype can be read and 
principally understood when using the new archetype.
But not vice versa…!
If you need to exchange data from new to old, there will be problems like you 
describe below.
If you require this kind of compatibility to be a major change, you’ll end up 
having many, many changes creating a new major version, essentially ignoring 
that – this is, more or less  - what the minor version can be used for.
The one is intra-system, the other is inter-systems, in any direction, if you 
like.

On the clinical level, you could – in an extreme case - even go so far that a 
(alphabetically) miniscule change to the text or description of an at code can 
be major version change if it (sufficiently) changes the semantics of the 
element. There will be edge cases for this I suspect.

If any of the changes – in a concrete case - is critical from a clinical point 
of view, I would then argue this needs to be a major change by the modeller, 
even if technically it is just a patch or minor version change.

Using you examples below, if the new element (1.) is absolutely critical, it 
may warrant a new major version, even if it is not mandatory (for reasons 
discussed a few days ago on the list)
If a value is added to the internal value set (2.), I absolutely agree that, 
this may change the meaning of the other values, especially in the “other” case.
I have argued the same way like you before, but I now think that it is a 
clinical (or semantical/logical) decision, not a pure technical one, to make 
this a major version change.

Adding a runtime name constraint (3.) is a major change from a technical point 
already, in my view.
(More interesting in my view is if deleting a runtime name constraint is a 
major change as well, I think so (and CKM agrees, surprisingly 😉 ), essentially 
for what you argue below.

Widening cardinality/occurrence constraints (4.) would give you the problem you 
describe.
I still think this is the prototype of what constitutes a minor version change.

We could of course consider requiring a technical change to be backward 
compatible AND forward compatible, so that this works 100% under all 
circumstances BETWEEN systems, in all directions. Then the order of old and new 
doesn’t make a difference for the comparison. Most of the minor versions 
wouldn’t exist, but be major version changes instead.

Cheers,
Sebastian

Von: openEHR-clinical 
[mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>]
 Im Auftrag von Bakke, Silje Ljosland
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 16. November 2017 11:07
An: 
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>;
 For openEHR clinical discussions 
([email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>) 
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Betreff: Versioning of archetypes: Minor or major changes?

Another crosspost between the Clinical and the Implementers lists.

In versioning archetypes, we’ve defaulted to SemVer’s three version levels 
MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH. When discussing with DIPS what should be considered MINOR or 
MAJOR changes, we’ve come to the preliminary conclusion that many more changes 
than we previously thought may require a MAJOR version change. This is 
exemplified below mostly with exchange of information between systems, but may 
also be relevant within a system when adding new functionality with a newer 
version of the same archetype.

These are as follows:

  1.  Adding non-mandatory elements (ie elements with occurrences 0..*): 
Depending on the validation mechanism at the receiving end, a system with an 
earlier version of the archetype that receives a message or payload with an 
element it doesn’t recognise may reject the message or just ignore the new 
element.
  2.  Adding values to an internal value set:

     *   If adding the value Z to a value set that was originally “X, Y, 
Other”, you’re modifying the value of “Other”, which previously would include 
Z. Semantically this is a major change, even if technically it’s a minor one.
     *   If sending data to a system that has an earlier version of the 
archetype, the new value will not be understood.

  1.  Adding a run time name constraint: A run time name constraint has its own 
AT code, which could confuse a receiving system if it receives a code it 
doesn’t know about.
  2.  All changes in cardinality or occurrences that opens up the archetype’s 
constraints, such as making a previously mandatory element optional, or making 
a previously single occurrence element multiple occurrence. Not receiving an 
element you thought was mandatory or receiving more instances of an element 
than you thought possible, can make a receiving system’s validation mechanism 
protest.

Thoughts?

Kind regards,
Silje Ljosland Bakke

Information Architect, RN
Coordinator, National Editorial Board for Archetypes
Nasjonal IKT HF, Norway
Tel. +47 40203298
Web: http://arketyper.no<http://arketyper.no/> / Twitter: 
@arketyper_no<https://twitter.com/arketyper_no>

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