FHIR Chat · Validating against multiple profiles

Stream: conformance

Topic: Validating against multiple profiles

Simone Heckmann (Nov 10 2017 at 16:09):

Is there a way to "include" other profiles into a profile? I mean not like derived profile, but assuming that you derive from a national base profile but your profile requires to also be compatible with an IHE profile...
Can I say something like: Instances are only valid to my profile if they also validate against this/these other profile(s)?

Lloyd McKenzie (Nov 10 2017 at 16:15):

You might be able to do it with an invariant, or you could require declaration of the other profile (which would then cause validation to happen against that profile if the validator had access to it). Otherwise no mechanism I can think of.

Simone Heckmann (Nov 10 2017 at 16:44):

How would I be able to tell whether there are conflicts between my profile and the declared profile?

Simone Heckmann (Nov 10 2017 at 20:24):

The only way I came up with is to create the derived profile with Forge, then open the StructureDefinition with an editor, change the base definition to the included/declared profile, re-open in Forge, and see if there's any errors. In theory, I think that should work, but it feels like a "hack".

Grahame Grieve (Nov 10 2017 at 21:27):

yes you can but I haven't pcakaged up the tooling to make it easy without hacking java code et

Lloyd McKenzie (Nov 11 2017 at 11:36):

@Grahame Grieve , how would that manifest in the StructureDefinition?

Grahame Grieve (Nov 12 2017 at 07:18):

well, no directly. There's a tool that you can give a pair of structure definitions, and ask whether instances can be compatible to both, and what profile would be or/and for them

Grahame Grieve (Nov 12 2017 at 07:19):

not sure what a structure definition should actually do

Simone Heckmann (Nov 12 2017 at 11:38):

I my mind (being a Forge user) it should work somehow like this:
I create a new StructureDefinition B based on StructureDefiniton A, then I somehow add the information, that B needs to comply also with C and D.

So whenever I add a constraint, Forge would check if it's compliant with A, C and D otherwise show an error. Same if C or D have required extensions or modifierExtension that are missing in B.

Does that make sense?

Simone Heckmann (Nov 12 2017 at 11:40):

I guess from the technical perspective, Forge would have to "rotate" C and D into the basedOn property and re-validate to see if it still works and report an error if it doesn't.