Stream: IG creation
Topic: Warning for 'Must Support' Backbones w/o Required Children?
Mark Rogers (Nov 28 2020 at 02:45):
Hi folks - I might be misunderstanding how Must Support works (my FHIR is just a spark so far), but I believe that a Backbone Element shouldn't be 'Must Support' without at least one child element that either similarly has been marked 'Must Support' or has a minimum cardinality of 1.
If I'm on the mark, then I've found an occurrence where an IG was able to publish exactly that kind of situation and it would seem that we'd want to create a new error/warning to prevent future occurrences. I checked the logs and didn't see any warnings/errors raised by the most recent submission.
If I'm not reading Must Support's guidance properly, please let me know.
Eric Haas (Nov 28 2020 at 03:08):
In the situation you describe a )need to have defined what must support means in your ig. And then b) any sub element may meet that must support requirement.
Lloyd McKenzie (Nov 28 2020 at 03:10):
It's not "great" practice to do that, but it's not prohibited. If there isn't other guidance in the IG, with the profile, or on the element, it essentially means that you must support at least one of the children - but you have full flexibility about which one(s).
Lloyd McKenzie (Nov 28 2020 at 03:11):
Some IG authors will presume that you will support the element in a 'useful' way. (E.g. you won't fill in a HumanName with just a 'use' element and nothing else), but that's not a safe assumption to make as far as the formal conformance rules go.
Eric Haas (Nov 28 2020 at 03:21):
Some IGs are permissive (what is not expressly forbidden is allowable).
Mark Rogers (Nov 28 2020 at 04:30):
Gotcha, thanks for clearing that up!
Last updated: Apr 12 2022 at 19:14 UTC
