Terminology Syndication Feed Implementation Guide
0.1.0 - ci-build International flag

Terminology Syndication Feed Implementation Guide, published by Australian e-Health Research Centre. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 0.1.0 built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/FHIR/fhir-syndication-ig/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

Security

Security

This specification covers the format of the syndication feed — not the transport, authentication, or authorisation mechanisms used to serve it. Those are publisher-defined.

The format does, however, provide one authorisation-related mechanism: the per-entry permission tag.

Per-entry permissions

An entry MAY carry one or more <onto:permission code="…"/> elements (see Ontoserver Extensions). Each permission code is an opaque tag. The intended semantics are:

  • A consumer holds zero or more permission codes (assigned out of band — typically from claims in an OAuth 2.0 / OIDC access token).
  • An entry with no <onto:permission> elements is unrestricted at the entry level.
  • An entry with one or more <onto:permission> elements is accessible only to consumers holding at least one of the listed codes.
  • A publisher serving the feed over an authenticated channel MUST filter or redact entries whose permissions the consumer does not hold — either by omitting the entry, or by omitting the artefact links while leaving the metadata visible.

The format does not prescribe:

  • How permission codes are minted or registered.
  • How they map to OAuth scopes, OIDC claims, or other authorisation primitives.
  • Whether feed-level authorisation is required to retrieve the feed document itself.

Integrity

The format guarantees artefact integrity through the hash attributes on <link>:

  • sct:md5Hash — legacy MD5
  • ncts:sha256Hash — current SHA-256

A consumer MUST verify at least one declared hash before treating a downloaded artefact as authoritative. When both are present, ncts:sha256Hash is authoritative.

The format does not specify an end-to-end signing mechanism for the feed document itself. Publishers requiring document-level integrity typically rely on TLS in transit and HTTPS-delivered feed URIs.