I came across this problem several times. It became almost impossible to use DV_BOOLEAN. The worst problem is that since DV_BOOLEAN has to be always true or false, if someone simply does not fill the field, it became immediately "false", which almost always was not what the user wanted.
The solution was to use a CODED_TEXT with 3 values (true, false, blank/null). For the GUI part, if the CODED_TEXT had less than 5 options, it was automatically rendered it as radio buttons and not combos. This avoided GUI hints. Actually, this is a common and good human/computer interface rule: use radio buttons if you have less than 5 options, render a combo if you have more than 5 options. Fabiane On 2/2/11 1:09 AM, Koray Atalag wrote: > > Hi All, I'd like to get feedback on this issue before we move on with > implementing. > > In short whether we should use DV_BOOLEAN to represent the result of a > Lab test as Positive/Negative. This particular test can have only two > values (well plus the null case of course). I suspect this wasn't the > purpose of this data type in the first place and was for really > no-brainer yes/no items as you would expect in any computer program. > But, as ever, clinical medicine is wicked and makes me think out of > the 'usual' good practice and explore whether this might be an > option...Perhaps this discussion will provide guidance for others in > the community as well. > > Secondly (assuming that we can use DV_BOOLEAN for such cases) in GUI > not all occurrences of Boolean will have labels as Yes/No...It can > also be True/False, Present/Absent, Positive/Negative etc. Moreover in > difference language translations they will surely be different. But in > ADL no at code is given for this data type; Yes and No is written > implicitly within the definition section. This means that we cannot > set the Text in ontology section and then have language translations. > Has anyone come across such a requirement? If so what's your solution. > > Note that I currently model all such data items with DV_CODED_TEXT and > had no problems. But when I wanted to render radio buttons for Yes/No > type items instead of default combobox widget I either need a GUI > directive (which we try to avoid if possible) or set the data type to > DV_BOOLEAN so that the default widget would be radio button and we can > use accordingly. > > Cheers, > > -koray > > > _______________________________________________ > openEHR-technical mailing list > openEHR-technical at openehr.org > http://lists.chime.ucl.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/openehr-technical -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.openehr.org/mailman/private/openehr-technical_lists.openehr.org/attachments/20110202/14ec39b2/attachment.html>
