ADL Workbench - What's New

Summary

Jan 10 2007 Release (subversion rev 152):

Repository merging - local and reference repositories can now be merged and viewed as one logical repository
Inheritance views - the node map now shows nodes as inherited, redefined or added

Getting Started

Locate archetype repository
The ADL workbench will process archetypes found in a "reference repository" directory and an optional "work repository" directory. Typically the reference repository will be the 'dev' directory in the openEHR Subversion knowledge repository. You only need to specify a work repository if you are developing archetypes yourself; its location may well be in another part of the openEHR Subversion repository, or another version-controlled area used with colleagues.

If both are specified, the archetypes will be merged into a single tree in the ADL Workbench, under a common folder structure, and showing specialisation relationships. To make merging work properly, the directory structure of a work repository should follow that used in the openEHR Subversion knowledge repository.

For both reference and work repositories, the repository location is specified in the Repository setting dialog, from the Repository menu, as shown in the screen shot. The directory just above the directories you want to see should be chosen.

In the example here, the "dev/adl" directory in a local copy of the openEHR Subversion knowledge repository (http://svn.openehr.org/knowledge) is being chosen for the reference repository, and a directory "dev-nl-tno/adl" as the work repository.

Repository setting

Merged Archetype Repositories
If a work repository has been specified along with the reference repository, the appearance of the two groups of archetypes will be as shown in the example. Note that archetypes from the work repository that are specialisations of those in the reference repository will be dislayed that way in the tree merge.

Merged archetype repositories

Archetype Viewer

User Interface

Specialised Archetype View (NEW)
The default view of any specialised archetype shows the effects of inheritance and redefinition of nodes as follows:

parts of the archetype inherited unchanged are shown with yellow/grey icons of the same visual form as the usual icons; these parts of the archetype are also initially shown "rolled up" (i.e. collapsed tree nodes) for convenience;
parts of the archetype inherited but then redefined in the current archetype are shown using coloured icons with a thin yellow border;
parts of the archetype defined new in the current archetype are shown using normal coloured icons. A top level archetype consists solely of these kinds of nodes.

The right hand Inheritance/Flat view button can be used to toggle the icon view used in the node display; "Flat view" shows the archetype as a result of "flattening" through inheritance, i.e. the effective archetype at runtime.

The Inheritance view is likely to be useful for most users developing archetypes since it visually differentiates between their own work (usually additions to exisitng archetypes) and parts of the archetype defined in the parent.

node map specialisation example - c-reactive protein

node map specialisation example - problem diagnosis