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There are various ways of identifying terminologies. Two key categories include machine identifiers, such as Oids and UUIDs, and human-readable identifiers such as "SNOMEDCT". Here I am concerned with the latter. We need a reliable system of identifiers for terminologies that can be used in specifications, documents, and data. The identifiers need to be:
- human readable
- computable (i.e. mutual uniqueness is assured)
- take account of versions / releases in a computable way
- do not require dereferencing (e.g. like Oids) to know which terminology is being identified
- controlled
The first question we have to ask is 'what is a terminology', or more practically, when are two 'terminologies' distinct, and when are they the same? Similarly, when are two physical 'terminologies' in fact just two variants of the same one? Part of the answer should rely on solid design principles, including of never re-using codes. However to be practical we might accept a couple of violations in a very large terminology release with respect to a previous one.
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