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Version compare

Introduction

In 3.1 release version creation was added to Snow Owl. A version is created when the state of a particular terminology needs to be captured, from a business sense it means that the terminology is ready to be published to customers. In Snow Owl 3.3, we've added the ability to compare two different versions of the same terminology with each other to more easily visualize their differences.

Comparing versions is available for each terminology for which version can be created, namely the following:

Compare versions of terminologies

Compare versions

The compare versions feature is available at Tools > Compare Versions...

Opening the version compare wizard

Select the terminology of the version for comparison.

Select terminology for the compare

Set the Source version and the Destination version, then finish the wizard.

Select versions to compare

Now you will see a screen showing the differences between the selected versions. An editor will indicate the differences between the selected versions. The compare editor is organized into three sections, which are described below. The size of the sections and the columns can be adjusted by dragging their edges.

The version compare editor displays the results

Change summary section

The change summary section displays an overview of the number of new, modified, and deleted components between versions. In the figure below, you can see that between the 2013-07-31 and 2014-01-31 versions of SNOMED CT 2,225 components have been added, 16,284 components have been modified and no components have been deleted.

Summary of the changes between two versions

Changed components section

The changed components section displays a hierarchical tree of changed concepts, which can be expanded and contracted to view child concepts. Concepts have an icon indicating the nature of the change: added (+), modified (triangle/delta) and removed (-). Selecting a concept displays additional detailed information about the change in the right-hand section.

A hierarchical overview of the updated components

You can click the collapse all nodes button to collapse the tree to its original view. A toggle button allows selecting between a flat and hierarchy view of the changed concepts. If you're interested in a particular concept's changes, you can set the view to a list and then click the header to sort the changed concepts by their name.

List view of the changed components

Change details section

The change details section provides the detailed changes for a single concept.

A detailed description of the changes