I’m defining some ValueSets for use with an application and am looking for some guidance on when to use the compose property versus the expansion property to specify the values.
For a simple ValueSet that returns all contents of a code-system, definition is simple via compose.include. However, I noticed that when I retrieve this ValueSet via the $expand operation, it returns the values in the expansion property. Why is that?
For a ValueSet that represents a subset of a code-system - e.g. a set of ICD-10 codes - it seems that using the compose.include property is the way to go, explicitly specifying the codes I want included.
When would I define a ValueSet using the expansion property? Or, is this property only intended to be populated by a server in the response to an $expand API call?
Many thanks!
Our recommendation is that you do not define a value set by means of expansion, and that expansion is only intended to be populated by a terminology server in response to the $expand call. It’s a matter of the difference between ‘here’s the rules’ and ‘here’s what the applying the rules ends up meaning’ - storing and using the second is fragile over time, as the context in which the rules exists changes. But many terminology frameworks - some in wide use - only store and distribute the expansions. And there are cases where pre-computing and storing the expansions is useful even where you have terminology servers that can compute the $expand operation ubiquitiously available.
For these reasons, we allow the expansion - and sometimes only the expansion - to be stored and exchanged, even though our recommendation is that you always use $compose except in the response to $expand
Thank you Graham. Exactly what I was looking for. Cheers!