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openEHR archetypes as SQL tables

· One min read
Borut Jures
Borut Jures
Author of ArcEHR

Sidharth Ramesh proposes openEHR archetypes as SQL tables and I'm one of the few sympathizers of that approach 😊

I tried it with 4 different SQL/ORM libraries, but those pure SQL approaches aren't a good match for openEHR highly hierarchical data.

My current attempt involves implementing the openEHR Reference Model (RM) on ArcadeDB. The POC works well. Users can query using the standard ArcadeDB flavor of SQL in their browsers (all Apache 2.0 licensed).

I see ArcadeDB as a candidate for both transactional and analytical openEHR CDR. It would avoid the "black box" nature of existing CDRs which force users to use a niche querying language (AQL) to get any data out of the CDR.

Another "feature" is skipping at-codes for querying, substituting them with readable property names familiar to experts who query traditional relational databases:

Archetype Definition

This can be queried using the following SQL:

SQL Query