FHIR Terminology Ecosystem IG, published by HL7 FHIR Product Director. This guide is not an authorized publication; it is the continuous build for version 1.9.3 built by the FHIR (HL7® FHIR® Standard) CI Build. This version is based on the current content of https://github.com/HL7/fhir-tx-ecosystem-ig/ and changes regularly. See the Directory of published versions

Test Case History

This page details the changes made to the terminology tests over time, based on the GitHub releases. Note that the GitHub repository that contains these tests also contains many other test cases for other kinds of functionality; this history only lists releases that include changes to the terminology tests.

1.9.3

This release is dominated by a rework of the $translate tests, and by settling how servers report inactive concepts.

• $translate: the source concept may now be named with sourceCode + sourceSystem, with sourceCoding, or with sourceCodeableConcept, and R4 servers are tested with the R4 spellings of the same thing (code + system, coding, codeableConcept, and targetsystem)
• $translate: tests for the full range of relationship types, including not-related-to, which is returned as a match like any other; and for ConceptMap.group.element.comment and .target.comment, returned as sourceComment and targetComment (element.comment is preadopted from R6 using a cross-version extension)
• $translate: tests for noMap — stated as element.noMap in R5, and as a target with no code in R4, but reported the same way either way — and for ConceptMap.group.unmapped in all three modes (use-source-code, fixed and other-map), including chains of otherMap maps and the detection of circular references
• $translate: the response reports originMap, the concept map the chain of maps started from, and a used-conceptmap for every other map that contributed to it (originMap was introduced in 1.9.2; it is now settled as the start of the chain of maps, not the end)
• $translate: the R4 reverse parameter is tested — an R4 server reverses the source and target parameters and translates forwards, an R5 or later server returns an error — along with the R5+ way of asking the same question, which is to name the target concept as the source. The translate tests are split into two suites so that the unmapped tests see only the concept maps they are about
• Display validation: validate-code-inactive-display and validation-simple-code-bad-display are each split into a lenient and a not-lenient variant, driven by a new lenient-display property on the test case
• Test cases can be restricted to particular FHIR versions with a version property (4.0, or !4.0 for "any version but R4"), and $optional$ accepts a version filter (version:4) so that one expected response can cover both R4 and R5 servers where they legitimately differ. Expected content can also be marked $only$ — required in the nominated versions or modes, and prohibited in all the others; this is the counterpart of $optional$, which only ever relaxes a requirement
• Inactive concepts: a server that knows a concept is inactive SHALL say why, so the status property is no longer optional in an expansion, and the expected responses have been updated to require it. Also, a status of deprecated no longer makes a concept inactive — inactive and retired do (see the requirements page)
• A filter that matches no codes: an include whose only filter selects nothing expands to nothing, and must not be treated as an include with no filter, which would select every code in the code system (simple-expand-regex-none, validation-simple-code-regex-none)
• Repeating concept properties: CodeSystem.concept.property is 0.., so a filter selects a concept when *any of its values match — not just the first — and expansion.contains.property reports all of them (simple-expand-repeating-prop, simple-expand-repeating-prop-values)
• SNOMED CT: the test subontology has been regenerated from the International August 2025 release with effective time 20250909, and now includes the MRCM attribute domain and attribute range reference sets, the lateralizable body structure reference set, and a simple reference set. The relationship module in the subset has been corrected, and the loading and regeneration instructions in tx-source/readme.md have been rewritten
• SNOMED CT: new postcoordination tests for concept model (MRCM) validation — attribute domain, attribute range, cardinality, grouping and laterality — and for concrete values, both valid and invalid (out of range, a decimal where an integer is required, a concept where a concrete value is required and the reverse); plus an expression whose attribute value is itself refined
• SNOMED CT: a constraint = * filter returns every concept, including inactive concepts and module concepts, so the ECL wildcard expansion and snomed-expand-count-all now agree (2259 codes)
• Fix the SNOMED CT test set URL: correct the edition/version identifier used across the SNOMED test cases to the terminology-ecosystem test edition (http://snomed.info/xsct/31000003106/version/20250909), updating the affected requests and expected responses (display names and version URIs) to match, and correct the type of the system-version parameter from string to uri
• OperationOutcome.issue.location is optional in the expected responses, and the operationoutcome-message-id extension is optional for every server except tx.fhir.org; the optional version OUT parameter is allowed in the six codeableconcept-*-vs1wb version tests
• Duplicate canonical URLs resolved: simple-all and simple-enumerated were each defined twice with different content. The permutations suite now uses the shared simple/valueset-all.json, and its own enumerated value set has been renamed to valueset-simple-enumerated-codes.json
• Housekeeping: remove test files that were no longer referenced by any test case (the openEHR set, the explicit-version OMOP translate tests, the value set import tests and others), de-duplicate code-vnn-vsmix-2, remove a stray uuid parameter and stale $optional$ markers, fix JSON typing errors (a boolean written as a string), add the total OUT parameter to the CPT expansion test now that CPT iteration is fixed, and add the missing flat-format expected response for search-expand-all-yes

1.9.2

This is preparatory for settling the SNOMED CT tests, and then it will be labelled as 2.0.0

• Extensive SNOMED CT ECL testing: reorganised and greatly expanded the ECL tests — operator grouping and precedence (grouped-or / grouped-and, ambiguous precedence), cardinality and role-group occurrence counting, complex refinements and exclusions, and wildcard expansions; require valueset-unclosed on filter-based ECL expansions; and tests for enumerating grammar-based code systems (including count=0 counts)
• Add test cases for the new $compare operation (previously named $related)
• Translate improvements: reverse translation, and originMap (replacing sourceMap)
• More code system version-control tests: value sets including/excluding different versions of the same code system, version pinning across all SNOMED requests, and version-dependent translate tests
• Tests for complex exclusions, contained value sets, child-of, and regex filters — including a regex denial-of-service case and improved regex error messages
• Search $expand: flat result format (response:flat) and support for the total OUT parameter
• Warnings for status / retired / inactive codes, with fixes to the reported location
• Display-name consistency, additional language and secondary-display tests, and allow designation.use.display in responses
• Validate a CodeableConcept using the first matching code rather than the last
• Content refresh: LOINC 2.82, updated SNOMED test load-set and version URIs, and updated VSAC content
• Numerous renames, parameter-name and typo fixes for consistency, unique value set ids, and removal of stale parameters (non-standard limit replaced by count, bad cache-id)

1.9.0

• Add a set of tests for controlling the version of CodeSystems (ValueSet.compose.include.version, with wildcards, and the expansion parameters system-version etc.)
• Revisit the tests to ensure that they are correct
• Remove the deprecated version parameter that is no longer used or supported (after 1 year of grace)
• Various improvements to error messages and test descriptions

1.7.7-SNAPSHOT

• Define hierarchyMeaning for the simple CodeSystem

1.7.6

• Allow expansion.id & expansion.offset in many tests
• Rename valueset-version to default-valueset-version
• tx.fhir.org only: Add supplement test cases and LOINC tests for CLASSTYPE, answers-for, and answer-list

1.7.5

• Add test for validation of displayLanguage

1.7.4

• Add message id

1.7.3

• Use systemVersion instead of version

1.7.2

• Add message-id extension to tests

1.7.1

• Remove language weights except where it matters
• Add x-caused-by-unknown-system when a supplement is not found
• Remove R4 variants

1.7.0

• Move master tests to tx-ecosystem-ig instead of general test cases

1.6.6

• Fix references to wrong value set in supplement tests

1.6.2

• Add specific tests for the interaction between ValueSet.compose.inactive and the activeOnly parameter
• Add tests for correctly populated CapabilityStatement and TerminologyCapabilities resources

1.6.0

There is no specific history for the terminology test cases prior to version 1.6.0. The only history notes available are mixed in with all the other kinds of tests in the GitHub release notes.