If our systems get too complicated, we will never get there. With all due respect, the ADL of OpenEHR looks to me like a further complication rather than simplification for example - yet another mini language where I believe that using existent versatile markups (like YAML) could have the achieved the same goal with less steep learning curve and the benefit of human readability.I just had a look - it's cute! However, it only does the dADL part of ADL, not the cADL part - there is no constraint semantics that I saw (but I promise to read the entire spec soon). dADL has about 1/4 of the syntax of YAML, so I wouldn't say it's terribly complex. Regardless, I am 90% sure that the dADL parts of an ADL archetype could be saved in YAML - if this seems a useful thing to do, we can write a YAML serialiser class, leaving the cADL part of the archetype in the middle intact, or perhaps with YAML-ised leaf nodes or similar.
Another language we just found out about is HUTN - human usable textual notation.
I actually still think we did a nice job on dADL - have a look at the 'description' and 'ontology' sections of http://www.oceaninformatics.biz/adl/repository/archetypes/ehr/entry/openehr-entry.apgar_result.draft.html. I wish XML had been done like this, to speak the truth... The 'definition' part is in cADL.
- thomas
