URGENT: Additional Rollup Delta file planned for Corona Virus descriptions

Hi everyone

Thanks again for all of your invaluable feedback - so helpful in fact that we've changed the proposal in line with your suggestions, and as Rory said we've now proposed a full interim International release to the Member Forum (as opposed to the original Delta package):

https://snomed.atlassian.net/wiki/display/MEMBERFORUM/URGENT%3A+Feedback+requested

The plan is therefore to deploy the updated package next week, once we've received and managed any feedback from the MF or GA over the next couple of days.

So if you're planning to take the interim release, you should plan around receiving it by the end of next week.

In the meantime, let's open the discussions on how we're going to manage the July 2020 release, because as most of you rightly pointed out this is going to be impacted by the interim release, due to us not yet having officially moved to continuous delivery. Once we do, we can remove the Delta's from the International Edition packages as planned, and this will resolve all problems we're about to discuss. In the meantime however, whilst the Snapshot and Full will be correct in July 2020, we need to ensure that we are careful about forming a useful Delta.

So the options are:

We publish the July 2020 International Edition as if the March 2020 Interim release never happened, with a Delta relative to January 2020, containing all of the new Corona content with an effectiveTime of 20200131.
1. This content would have an effectiveTime of 20200131, which is slightly misleading, but prevents any problems for those users who don't take the March 2020 Interim release and who want to use the July 2020 Delta file.
2. However, it causes a minor problem for those who do take the March 2020 Interim release and want to use the Delta, as there will obviously be duplicate records with a different effectiveTime. Can we expect people's systems to cope with this?
We publish the July 2020 International Edition as if the March 2020 Interim release never happened, with a Delta relative to January 2020, containing all of the new Corona content with an effectiveTime of 20200312 (or whenever the March 2020 Interim release is finalised).
1. This content would have an effectiveTime of March 2020, which is transparent as it doesn't pretend the March 2020 never happened.
2. However it does potentially cause problems for users who haven't yet updated their systems to cope with multiple effectiveTimes in the Delta's.
3. It still causes a minor problem for those who do take the March 2020 Interim release and want to use the Delta, as there will obviously be duplicate records, just this time with the same effectiveTime.
We publish the July 2020 International Edition as if the March 2020 Interim release is an official release, with a Delta relative to March 2020, containing all of the new Corona content with an effectiveTime of 20200312 (or whenever the March 2020 Interim release is finalised).
1. This content would have an effectiveTime of March 2020, which is transparent as it doesn't pretend the March 2020 never happened.
2. However it does cause problems for users who don't take the March 2020 release and want to use the Delta's, as they will not see the new Corona content from March 2020. They would therefore have to either use the Snapshot, or use 2x Delta's in one update.
3. It causes no problems for those who do take the March 2020 Interim release and want to use the Delta, as there will be no duplicate records.
We publish 2x Delta's in July 2020, one relative to January 2020 and the other to March 2020.
1. This seems initially like the option that covers off the most use cases, HOWEVER it could potentially cause a lot of confusion over which to use!
2. It would also be dangerous to include them both in the International Edition package, and so we'd still need to decide which one to include in the official package, and which to publish separately.
3. It also has the drawback of not pushing the prep for continuous delivery, and getting people used to a different way of working that won't be propagated once we move to continuous delivery.

Given the (relatively small) number of known users who actually still use the Delta's, and then on top of that the even smaller subset of those users who are likely to actually use the interim March 2020 release, we're currently leaning towards option 1, as this appears to have the lowest impact.

However, option 2 has the additional benefit of encouraging people to get ready for multiple effectiveTimes in the Delta's, and to highlight anyone who still needs help and support with this transition.

Please have a read through and provide feedback on the options above, and also send us any alternative solutions that might have a reduced impact on all users?

Thanks again for all of your feedback, as always it's greatly appreciated!

Kind regards

Andrew

Original notice:

Hi everyone

We're considering releasing an additional Delta file, containing a handful of inactivated descriptions, and replacement descriptions for the Corona content that was originally deployed in the Jan 2020 release. This is to bring the descriptions in line with the new international wording.

We would release it as a separate package to the International Edition (NOT a recall and a replacement of Jan 2020), containing just a Delta file (and possible a Snapshot?) for the Descriptions. The new records would necessarily have a later effectiveTime than 20200131, and so would supersede the Jan records accordingly.

Please can you provide feedback on this proposal (both from a content and a packaging format point of view) before close of play tomorrow, 3rd March 2020? As we would plan to create and deploy this additional package within the next few days.

Thanks very much for your help as always,

Kind regards
Andrew