There are a number of reasons for modifying a relationship in an extension, including:
Relationships that are used to define extension concepts can be modified. However, please note that only the values of mutable attributes may be modified. As indicated in , the six mutable attributes of a relationship are: effectiveTime, active, moduleId, relationshipGroup, characteristicTypeId, and modifierId. When a change is required to the source, destination or type of the relationship, the relationship must be inactivated and a new relationship created with the required values.
All modifications to a SNOMED CT relationship should also conform to the SNOMED CT concept model rules, including relationship group cardinality constraints. For more information please refer to the Editorial Guide and the Machine Readable Concept Model.
Relationships authored by SNOMED International, which define concepts in the International Edition, should not be modified. If an error is detected in the International Edition, which requires one or more relationships to be modified, the issue should be documented and reported to SNOMED International using the Content Request Service. In situations in which an extension producer needs to modify a relationship to temporarily fix an issue, this should be done in a module owned by the extension producer, and reported to SNOMED International It is recommended that extension producers try to avoid modifying international relationships, as such modifications may affect the results of subsumption testing and therefore may have an impact on cross-edition interoperability.
Mutability of relationship attributes |
The table below provides a summary of the process to follow when modifying a relationship in an extension.
| File Type | Process |
|---|---|
| Stated Axiom | Modifying a concept definition involves updating the defining properties of the concept, i.e. making changes to the axioms that represent necessary conditions for the meaning of the concept. Once the update has been performed, the concept is classified together with the SNOMED CT content it belongs to, and a new set of relationships are inferred. |
To prepare for publication, a new row representing the updated concept definition is added to the OWL axiom reference set. | |
The attributes of the reference set member representing the stated axiom are set as follows:
| |
| Relationship | Depending on the nature of the change made, updates to the inferred relationship file will be made to reflect the changes.
|
The attributes of the new version of the relationship are set as follows:
|