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A SNOMED CT Expression Constraint contains either a single focus concept, or a series of focus concepts joined by either conjunction, disjunction or exclusion. Each focus concept in an Expression Constraint is either a concept reference or a wildcard, and is normally preceded by either a constraint operator or a memberOf function. An Expression Constraint may also contain a refinement, which consists of grouped or ungrouped attributes (or both). Each attribute consists of the attribute name (optionally preceded by a cardinality, reverse flag and/or attribute operator) together with the value of the attribute. The attribute name is either a concept reference or a wild card. The attribute value is either an expression constraint or a concrete value (string, integer or decimal). Conjunction or disjunction can be applied at a variety of levels, including between expression constraints, refinements, attribute groups, and attributes. An expression constraint can be followed by a dot and attribute name pair. Figure 1 below illustrates the overall structure of an expression constraint using an abstract representation. Those parts of an expression constraint, which are in common with SNOMED CT Compositional Grammar expressions, are shown with dotted lines to emphasise the new features (using solid lines) in the Expression Constraint Language. Please note that no specific semantics should be attributed to each arrow in this abstract diagram.

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Figure 1: Abstract Model of a SNOMED CT Expression Constraint

Figure 2 below shows an example of an expression constraint

with the main components marked. These components will be explained further in the subsequent sections of this document.

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