Is there, or can there be made, a formal relationship between PMF properties
and PIDS traits?
Partial Proposed Resolution:
The PMF uses CosPropertyService interfaces for property manipulation. These
properties are not explicitly namespace-qualified.

typedef string PropertyName;
struct Property

;

The IDL for SpecifiedTraits seems incorrect. There is not definition for elements of this union for ALL_TRAITS and NO_TRAITS so these values can not be used.

We in SIGMPI have recently made some good strides in harmonizing HL7 and
PIDS by adding some missing events and updating the identifier management
language (id domains, profiles, traits). We are even applying event names
that approximate the PIDS operation names where applicable in the new
events:

get person demographics
find candidates
get corresponding identifiers
allocate identifiers (Tim notes you can do that with a register_new_ids
supplying an empty profile, although personally I am disgusted by such a
practice because it commonly leads to dupes, and is only valid for
intentionally-to-be-reused IDs which is also philosophically questionable)

> I think that this example on page 3-127 is wrong or terribly misleading.
> [x < 0] 4: invert (x, color) – conditional Message
>
> If I read right, condition-clause is supposed to follow the sequence number.
> So the correct example would be:
> 4 [x < 0] : invert (x, color) – conditional Message.
>
> To me, this is a guarded message
> [x < 0] 4: invert (x, color) – guarded Message

Since this representation of trait values in XML is fully-compliant at the
IDL level, it's not a functionality change.
The expression of trait metadata (so as to document the STRUCTURE of it) is
a functionality change but it is defensible as a fix, even to make to make
it possible for PIDS clients to validate dates - not just textual format but
the value domains at the basic and abstract datatypes.

I think we can all agree at this point that we need an operation on
IdentificationComponent called

get_trait_metatdata

and I feel strongly that it should use DTD notation. If we agree at this
level (please everyone - do you agree so far?), then I think the next
question is how to express basic and abstract types in the DTD.

Is there an exception, or a "correct way" to let the client know that an
underlying infrastructure error (like an RDBMS error) has occurred?

Since with CORBA 2.3, everything is to be case insensitive there are some
problems
with the PersonIdService.idl. The statement defining: "Trait trait" in
TraitSelector now is illegal. This requires
a minor change in the IDL to make the instance of Trait to be different.

Summary: I have one request for the revision task force. There is
a trait in the PersonIdTraits module - PIDS/ExternalIds and its type is
QualifiedPersonIdSeq. We need another type for this trait - which will
correspond to the HL7 type for the patient"s Identifiers, e.g. it should
have the domain, identifier and the type of identifier. A system can
support multiple alternate patient identifiers - so in order to fully
qualify what kind of externalId is being used, its type ( HL7 suggested
table of Identifiers types can be used) needs to be defined.

Summary: There is an extra "};" in the PersonIdService.idl file just before the
added find_or_register_ids method in the CorrelationMgr interface

Summary: The text of the spec for CorrelationMgr has find_or_register_ids() in it
but it isn"t in the IDL (section 2.6.7) on page 2-41, although it is in the
overall IDL. at the end of the document.

Summary: In order for a client to rightly interpret the results of a search using
find_candidates or find_or_register_ids, it would be very helpful to have an
operation to get a description of the matching algorithm employed

Summary: We need a version of find_candiate that returns candidates (each with
qualified id and profile) from multiple domains - not just the correlating
domain.

Summary: ISSUE Typos: Document formal/99-03-05 still has a number of typos that
were to be fixed in the first RTF.
This includes PHONE_NUMER_HOME instead of PHONE_NUMBER_HOME in the
HL7Version2_3.idl and
#pragma prefix "org/omg" on pages 2-13 and 2-44.

Summary: I think the spec needs some narrative on the semantics of aliases.
Specifically, it fails to point out that the receipt of an alias from a
source domian does not necessarily imply that its value is to be used as an
alias in the correlating domain.

This clarification is important because if a VIP (say, the president) is
anonymous under an alias in a source domain it might be entirely appropriate
to treat that alais as a real name in the correlating domain. Similarly,
the correlating domain should be free to maintain its own alias for persons
independent of source domains.

Summary: Issue: "Relationship to PMF"
What is the complete and useful normative relationship of PIDS to the Party
Mangement Facility (PMF)? On my first reading of it, I believe the PMF spec
has already addressed part of it by relating their QualifiedID to the PIDS
QualifiedPersonID (both are an identifier value qualified by its Domain Id).
I would add that the Property Lists by which the PMF records attribution of
a party can be mapped to PIDS traits, although I wonder if we could be even
more specific like "Trait Names that match property names (if they are
Namespace-qualified) are understood to correspond. If this is agreed, then
we have a formalized linkage of not only the IDs but the Traits, and the
basis for integration between the two without coupling..

Summary: Issue: "Client needs trait-type awareness so it can type-validate
interactive trait entries"

The supported_traits operation returns trait names but not types, leaving
the client unable to proactively validate trait entry. While the current
spec provides for the server
to throw InvalidTraitFormat on a bad date, It would be better to allow
the client to know a priori that the Birth Date is a date so that it can,
for example put up a visual date picker or otherwise validate the date
before the
user has tabbed on to other fields.

Summary: Issue: Does the spec need explicit "Link and Unlink Operations, or just
guidance on how to assert the
DuplicateIDs and ExternalIDs traits?

Summary: The spec is not clear enough on How to Handle Links

Based on clear feedback in HL7 forums, I know there is serious concern
over the fact that our Interfaces and info model show explicit support
for merges (merges deactivate one dupe and leave another intact) but
only implicit support for links (links leave multiple intact; In
effect, they simply assert or "record" dupes).

I find the last paragraph of 2.7 confusing: If PIDS implementations are
to be able to "carry administrative and auditing attributes such as
timestamp, user stamp, source system, and specific operation types",
then it raises thevalid question: how does the implementation know when
a link operation has occurred? We do not tell them anywhere in the spec
as it stands.

Summary: The "10. Appendix - Event Descriptions" in the PIDS spec were done
before the Notification Service was adopted. The Notification Service
uses a different mechanism to specify event types. The PIDS spec should
be updated to use the Notification Service event type language.

Summary: The "8. Appendix - Use Cases" in the PIDS spec do not accurately reflect
how PIDS is to be used. This should be updated.

Summary: PIDS specification has recommended the HL7 PID segment for standard trait names. The data type for many of the traits in the PID segment (like race, martial status etc.) are CE (Coded). An important aspect of achieving interoperatibility is to make a tight connection between coded fields and the coded vocabulary items that are possible values of the field. For example, the field "Sex" might have the allowable set of values: male, female and ambagious. To achieve that goal HL7 has defined value sets for the various coded fields. In most cases the values sets are from existing standard vocabulary like LOINC, UMLS etc. I was wondering - it will be nice if PIDS specifications also recommended the values sets for the coded fields in the PID segment to be the same as recommended by the HL7 standards.