Access4LearningNA / NADM

North American Data Model
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standalone refIds do not indicate where to get the data #147

Closed tqwhite closed 6 years ago

tqwhite commented 6 years ago

The standard refId type is a pure guid with no indication of the purpose of that guid. The name of an instance based on it might contain that information but at the cost of clarity of the meaning of the data in the context of its element.

Eg, in the IEP there are two kinds of xContacts, those that refer to parents and those that refer to everyone else. If the contact is a parent, then it is found in the xStudent/studentContacts. If someone else, it is an independent object.

To distinguish these in an IEP object (this is a fictitious example), one might want to have two elements, parentGuardian and privateReadingCoach. Neither of these names indicate where the data should be found.

A way to deal with this is to add refId types that identify the location of the data referenced. Eg, a parentGuardianRefIdType that is a guid and includes the documentation, "found in xStudent/studentContacts".

tqwhite commented 6 years ago

I have added types for these refIds that specify where to look for the data