Introduction

Snow Owl 6.3 was focusing on various improvements that are necessary to support the work of National Release Centers and organizations authoring and publishing SNOMED CT Editions and Extensions.

Export related changes

To keep up with the SNOMED International updates, the following changes were implemented in relation to the RF2 export format:

  • Reference sets in export wizard are grouped by the module of the Reference set metadata concept
  • File names are updated:
    • Date reflects the effective time of the latest release, if unpublished components are exported, the date of the export is added
    • Extension ID filenames are prefixed with country code. This is stored in a configuration file, but can be overridden from the Export wizard as well
  • Description files are created on a per language basis
  • Unpublished components can be included or excluded
  • Reference sets of a type are exported into a single file (old behaviour can be configured too)
  • In the output files components are ordered by version and component ID
  • When no refsets are selected on the UI, no refsets are exported – UI and API mismatch is resolved

Import related updates

To enable the importing of inactivations from the newer versions of the international SNOMED release, the import is now less restrictive. Relationships with inactive source or target can be imported, so extension content can be adjusted within the tool accordingly.

Workflow improvements

Assigning multiple users to a task has been made more user friendly: the selection of an extra author or reviewer does not overwrite previous selections.

Mapping sets

The authoring and publication of Mapping sets is now supported. Mapping sets are generic mappings, where the map source and the map target can be any terminology component from any of the available terminologies.

Import/export mapping sets

Mapping sets can be imported from XLS format using the Import wizard at File>Import>Snow Owl>Mapping sets from Excel file. An easy to use wizard allows browsing the input file, selecting the import method (merging the contents to the existing database, or overwriting/updating the existing data). Upon finishing the import, changes are displayed to the user.

The Export wizard at File>Export>Snow Owl>Mapping set exports the contents of the Mapping Set database to the same Excel format.

Create and edit mapping sets

New mapping sets can be created by clicking the Add new mapping set button on the mapping set navigator. Available mapping sets can be browsed in the navigator, and organized into folders for easy managing.

Browsing mapping sets in the navigator

Mapping sets can be edited in a table-based editor, where each row represents a mapping. There is no restriction on the source and the target terminology.

A table-based mapping set editor

Browse mapping sets

Besides navigating and filtering the Navigator view, the Quick search and the Advanced search features accomodate for mapping set lookups as well. While the Quick search provides lexical lookup on the name of the mapping set, the advanced search enables searching for both metadata properties as well as the members term or ID.

Advanced search for mapping sets

Validation and whitelisting

Validation

Validation now supports running rules by severity and turning specific rules on or off from the validation. These can be configured in a dialog that pops up after clicking on the Validate button on the main toolbar.

Validation configuration wizard

Configuring validation rules to run

 

Whitelisting

Whitelisted components are moved to a separate view. Predefined whitelisted input can be imported.

Whitelist view

For each whitelisted component, the author and the date is recorded and can be exported as a report.

Example groovy script

A groovy script has been added that generates a report on the changes between two versions of SNOMED CT. The script is added to the Example Project automatically and can be executed by clicking the play button.

 

Example groovy script to compare versions

Results are printed into a csv file and are placed into the users home folder.

Miscellaneous

  • Filtering the LCS navigator now allows hierarchical view of the contents
  • Reference set advanced search now supports the use of logical operators (AND, NOT, OR…)
  • Reference set inactivation issues are resolved: for published components only inactivation is available from the navigator, members are inactivated automatically as well
  • Validation issues view performance improved
  • Reference set sorting is now considering the full member set when sorting by the referenced component