Minutes of Content Administrators Meeting

**August 25, 2008, 3:00 -- 4:30 p.m.**

+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| **Attendees**                                | **Organization**      |
+==============================================+=======================+
| ######### Robinette Aley                     | NMDP                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| ######### Steve Alred                        | Oracle                |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Becky Angeles                                | ScenPro               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Asther Asmelash                              |                       |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Alice Birnbaum                               | NIDCR                 |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Jenny Brush                                  | Scenpro               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Brian Campbell                               | EMMES                 |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Suzette Czech                                | NHLBI                 |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Janice Chilli                                | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Mary Cooper                                  | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Tommie Curtis                                | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Kathleen Gundry                              | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| ######### Larry Hebel                        | ScenPro               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| ######### Amy Jacobs                         | MSD                   |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| ######### Jocelyn Leatherwood                | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Betty Lee                                    | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Brenda Maeske                                | SAIC                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Roxanne Martinez                             | TerpSys               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Sal Mungal                                   | Duke                  |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Michele Nych                                 | NHLBI                 |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Jaime Parker                                 | TerpSys               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Baris Suzek                                  | Georgetown U          |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Denise Warzel                                | CBIIT                 |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| John White                                   | TerpSys               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+
| Claire Wolfe                                 | TerpSys               |
+----------------------------------------------+-----------------------+

1.  **Introduction/Approval of Minutes**

Tommie Curtis announced that Dianne Reeves was away on vacation. She
said that the meeting minutes from the last meeting were distributed.
She said that adding concept clean-up maintenance was a leftover topic
from the last meeting and it will be discussed at the next meeting.

2.  **Data Standards Update**

Tommie reminded everyone that the VCDE has posted changes to data
standards for review and comments are due September 3, 2008. A separate
email was sent to the listserv with details.

**3. UAT Testing**

There was a discussion of user acceptance testing for the upcoming caDSR
release. Steve Alred said that the staged environment will be ready
later this week and the application will be available to test from late
August until September 12, 2008. Steve noted that if you did use a
computer on site (hooked directly to the NCI network) then a VPN account
will be needed to do the testing as the environment is located behind
the firewall.

A Wiki page will be used to announce the release outside the firewall to
the public Internet. After UAT, there will be a period when the
application will be available behind the firewall while the security
screening is ongoing. For each tool, there will be a Wiki link to the
staged URL, a scope document, and release notes. Tommie showed the Wiki
page on Centra. People with Wiki access will be able to make comments
directly. Steve said he didn't plan to put the information into GForge.

**4. Update on Clean-up**

Tommie said some questions had arisen regarding the concept clean-up
project. She reiterated that keeping terms in caDSR synched with terms
in EVS is the objective. Currently if something in EVS changes (name,
definition, retirement), manual changes to the concepts in the caDSR are
required to set Workflow Status to retired/withdrawn, add a change note
and enter an end date. Also, sometimes a concept name or definition is
manually changed in the caDSR before the changes are available in the
production version of EVS which can cause a problem if EVS information
automatically replaces caDSR information. The goal is to establish
policies and procedures for incorporating EVS changes into the caDSR.
There are already established versioning rules for concepts, but a
process is needed for change identification, notification, review and
implementation. All new caDSR content should use the most current EVS
name and definition. Tommie said that these issues will be discussed at
the next meeting. She asked people to submit comments and questions to
address at the next meeting. She will post her presentation on the
Content Wiki page (<https://gforge.nci.nih.gov/docman/?group_id=349>)
and encouraged people to review and think of issues before September
8th.

Sal Mungal said that in the future, individual vocabularies will be
served up in a federated architecture, and questions need to be raised
regarding how the SIW would deal with that. The process that is
developed should also address when vocabularies which are not centrally
controlled through EVS processes change.

Larry Hebel said he had a nightly Sentinel report look at concepts in
caDSR, and review sources, comparing them to EVS. The issue to be worked
out is - what the rules are when changes are made and content is out of
sync? There is no "push" notification from EVS to the users of the
changed concepts.

**5. Continue Discussion of Registration Status**

Tommie revisited the issue of making changes to Registration and
Workflow statuses to help guide users to find good content, recommended
for reuse. One option being explored is to defer assignment of a
Registration status to items even if they are Released. Another option
is to have a review of items to assess whether it is reusable and to
assign a status of qualified if it were recommended for reuse. Brian
Campbell said that he would prefer to have it done programmatically due
to the volume of review required. He felt that the status should be set
to Qualified if certain criteria were met, such as:

-Classified in more than one Class Scheme

-Used in more than one CRF

-Designated by more than one context

There may be a need for Sentinel reports to content administrators,
identifying that items were being reused.

Brian asked when these rules might be implemented and asked if there
would be a sweep to apply new metrics to items currently marked
released. Tommie made note of the issues for a future discussion.

Denise Warzel said that if it were going to be automated, clear criteria
would need to be defined in business rules.

In preparation for the next meeting on this topic, Tommie asked for
comments on the proposed criteria and issues discussed. Denise said that
"publishing what the content group thinks is the best content" is a
related discussion. Denise suggested a Wiki page to collect comments
from the content administrators.

At the next meeting the group will address implementation issues and
vote on a new definition for Qualified Workflow status to indicate
reusability. Tommie said the Harmonization Team will see if they can
develop some metrics on CDEs in some of these categories. She said that
a small group would be created to hammer out the details after the
discussion at the next meeting.

**6. Conceptual Domains and Value Domains**

Denise led a discussion of finding equivalent Value Domains.

![](media/image1.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

Denise presented the ISO 11179 model that shows these relationships
among components in the caDSR and talked about the need to improve the
caDSR's implementation of the Conceptual Domain to solve these problems.
The caDSR community has built up semantically rich CDE content, but has
yet to use the linkages between the component parts. Right now there is
a manual process to find appropriate Value Meanings (VM) and there are
limits on how users can search for Value Meanings. Denise wants to
improve the ability to do this by changing implementation of Conceptual
Domains (CD).

![](media/image2.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

In order to support the identification of equivalent CDEs you should be
able to search for the same set of value meanings used in more than one
application. Currently, finding equivalent CDEs is very difficult.

Data Element Concepts (DEC) are associated with a single CD, and each CD
can be represented by more than one VD. Because there was no
organization of Conceptual Domains, Value Meanings were created with no
attempt at overarching structure. The CD should be a unifying conceptual
entity. If VMs are associated with a specific concept, then sub-setting
of the Value Meaning list would be supported.

![](media/image3.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

Claire Wolfe raised an issue about the registration of content from UML
models -- all DECs are assigned to a CD of caBIG. All VDs are based on
class primary concept. Denise agreed that the current business rules do
not support her proposal and these processes would need to be changed if
the caDSR model is modified.

A SIW -- Requirement may be to take an Object Class (OC) primary
concept, and associate a DEC to that CD. Denise said that model owners
should use the NCI thesaurus.

Brian said that part of the problem is that there are different views of
it. Denise said that the proposal would support curation - once you
create DEC its concepts would take you to a relevant CD, and to a set of
relevant Value Meanings. Brian said that he thought this fit the current
way of doing curation, using a small set of CDs to organize content. The
goal is to have a small set of VDs associated with the CD, with
sub-setting of the VMs. This is a use case to leverage the caDSR to help
discover good content.

The SIW functionality requires a search on concepts. If there are none
assigned in the VD, then the search will not find those components. The
group discussed whether to tag VDs with long names appearing in the DEC
in order to attach semantics to VDs.

A use case for a CD for therapy was discussed. Brian said that in CTEP,
anything related to therapy gets connected to that CD. When you look at
DECs in that CD, would they have different sets of value meaning sets?
Denise said they should have CDs for separate therapies so that
associated VMs would be discovered (with Prostate or Kidney). This will
be helpful on the grid in the future.

![](media/image4.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

Right now there are a lot of duplications based on duplication of Value
Domains.

Mary said there would need to be a revision to the current training.
Denise said that as the process would be automated there would not need
to be new training. She said that right now when you create a new CDE
you have to do a lot of analysis. The tools should facilitate the
registration of Value Domains as standalone items.

Denise showed some samples of the problems -- query of Anatomic
Structure results in 31 VDs, 15 DECs, and 22 CDEs. It is difficult to
tease out items for reuse and understand if some are duplicates. She
showed some mapping between VDs that could be done in an automated way.
She talked about the future of transformation services that would help
identify potential reuse VD and CDEs. Claire asked about who might
create new CDs. Denise said the tools will create them automatically.
There was a discussion of how much work might be involved. Denise said
her real goal was to truly implement ISO 11179 to support the kinds of
queries needed to identify reusable content.

![](media/image5.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

![](media/image6.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

![](media/image7.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

![](media/image8.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

![](media/image9.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

![](media/image10.png){width="5.739583333333333in" height="3.5875in"}

Brenda Maeske said that best practices to using Representation Term
qualifiers were the issue that raised this. She said that in the
interim, should administrators be adding Qualifiers to Rep Terms. Denise
said for Representation Terms we should use base terms and add a
Qualifier as needed. Mary Cooper asked if the Rep Term and the Qualifier
should be the basis for the long name. Denise said yes, but there should
not be redundant DEC concepts. Denise said that some duplication was not
unacceptable -- Representation Term may overlap with Property. The use
of CDs will alleviate the need to add semantics to the Rep Terms.

Denise said she would share her slides and Tommie will post on the
Content GForge site.

With the CTMS adopting caBIG conventions, there will be a need for CDs
to manage code sets. Curators can create CDs based on high level model
used in the EVS.

**7. Meeting Summary**

There is no meeting next week since it is a Holiday. The next content
meeting is scheduled for September 8, 2008.

> **[2008]{.underline}**
>
> 09/01 - [Holiday -- Labor Day]{.underline}
>
> 09/08 - Content/Software
>
> 09/15 - Software
>
> 09/22 - Content
>
> 09/29 - Software
>
> 10/06 - Content
>
> 10/13 - [Holiday --Veterans Day]{.underline}
>
> 10/20 - Content/Software
>
> 10/27 - Software
>
> 11/03 - Content
>
> 11/10 - Software
>
> 11/17 - Content
>
> 11/24 - Software
>
> 12/01 - Content
>
> 12/08 - Software
>
> 12/15 - Content
>
> 12/22 - Software
>
> 12/29 -- Content
>
> **[Follow Up/Action Items]{.underline}:**

+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > **   | > **Task**           | >           | > **Date | > **Date  |
| Action |                      |  **Assigned | > Due**  | > Co      |
| >      |                      | > To**      |          | mpleted** |
| Item** |                      |             |          |           |
+========+======================+=============+==========+===========+
| > 1    | > Send out Agenda to | > Tommie    | >        | > Ongoing |
|        | > be reviewed for    | > Curtis    | biweekly |           |
|        | > next meeting       |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 2    | > Update Metrics     | > Jocelyn   | > 5/5/08 | > TBD     |
|        | > table with         | >           |          |           |
|        | > expected           | Leatherwood |          |           |
|        | > performance % in   |             |          |           |
|        | > every category.    |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 3    | > Check to see if    | > Software  | > 5/5/08 | > TBD     |
|        | > the date is        | > Team      |          |           |
|        | > captured           |             |          |           |
|        | > automatically with |             |          |           |
|        | > the change         |             |          |           |
|        | > history.           |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 4    | > Look at the        | > All       | > 5/5/08 | > TBD     |
|        | > process of Change  |             |          |           |
|        | > Notification       |             |          |           |
|        | > whether Automated  |             |          |           |
|        | > or Manual          |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 5    | > Provide            | > Prerna    | > New    |           |
|        | > definitions and    | > Aggarwal  |          |           |
|        | > concept codes on   |             |          |           |
|        | > the metadata       |             |          |           |
|        | > clean-up reports.  |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 6    | > Provide use cases  | > All       | > New    |           |
|        | > on how             |             |          |           |
|        | > non-enumerated (or |             |          |           |
|        | > enumerated by      |             |          |           |
|        | > reference) value   |             |          |           |
|        | > domains are        |             |          |           |
|        | > represented in the |             |          |           |
|        | > caDSR              |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 7    | > Rewrite            | > Tommie    | >        |           |
|        | > definitions for    | > Curtis    |  8/11/08 |           |
|        | > Registration       |             |          |           |
|        | > Statuses, develop  |             |          |           |
|        | > new best practices |             |          |           |
|        | > and an approach to |             |          |           |
|        | > cleanup and        |             |          |           |
|        | > present at next    |             |          |           |
|        | > meeting.           |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 8    | > Prepare            | > Baris     | > New    |           |
|        | > presentation of    | > Suzek     |          |           |
|        | > the approved       |             |          |           |
|        | > Registration       |             |          |           |
|        | > Statues to present |             |          |           |
|        | > at a future VCDE   |             |          |           |
|        | > meeting.           |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 9    | > Work with Oracle   | > Tommie    | > New    |           |
|        | > on the Object      | > Curtis    |          |           |
|        | > Class Cleanup.     |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+
| > 10   | > Develop metrics    | > Tommie    | > New    |           |
|        | > for Workflow       | > Curtis    |          |           |
|        | > Statuses and form  |             |          |           |
|        | > small group to     |             |          |           |
|        | > work out the       |             |          |           |
|        | > details.           |             |          |           |
+--------+----------------------+-------------+----------+-----------+