Overview

The rm.data_structures package contains two packages: the item_structure package and the history package. The first describes generic, path-addressable data structures, while the latter describes a generic notion of linear history, for recording events in past time. The data_structures package is illustrated in the UML diagram below.

The data_structures package itself contains a single class, DATA_STRUCTURE, which is the ancestor of all openEHR data structures. Its only feature is the function as_hierarchy, which is implemented by each subtype of DATA_STRUCTURE, in order to generate a physical representation of the structure in ISO 13606 form. The ISO 13606 form is usually less optimal than the openEHR form, but is compatible with the less semantically rich standard, and is guaranteed (in theory) to be comprehensible to other systems which support ISO 13606 as an interoperability standard.