Hierarchical Codelists - Structural Metadata Management

Overview

A Hierarchical Codelist provides a hierarchical view over one or more ‘standard’ Codelists. A Hierarchical Codelist can be thought of in the same way as a database view: it does not define any new Codes, it is used to group any number of existing Codes from any number of existing Codelists.

A Hierarchical Codelist consists of one or more Hierarchies, each Hierarchy organises codes from one or more Codelists into a hierarchical structure. The same Code may appear multiple times in a hierarchy.

A Hierarchical Codelist does not have a defined purpose. However, they are typically used for data dissemination to provide another view on a standard Codelist.

Figure 1 showing part of a Reference Area Codelist

Hierarchical Codelist Wizard

The Hierarchical Codelist Wizard includes the first generic step for information about the Hierarchical Codelist.

The second step requires information on the Codelists that will be required when building the Hierarchies.

Figure 2 showing the Codelists required to build the Hierarchical Codelist

In addition this step includes the definition of each Hierarchy contained in the Hierarchical Codelist.

Figure 3 showing step 2 of the Hierarchical Codelist Wizard and the hierarchies contained in the Hierarchical Codelist

Step 3 of the wizard provides Codes management in each Hierarchy. Each Code added to the Hierarchy is clickable and can be dragged and dropped into a new position as required.

Step 4 of the wizard allows the user to provide a formal definition for each level of the hierarchy. For example if the root codes in a Hierarchy are all related to Industry Sector with child codes are all related to Industry Type, then the Hierarchy could be given formal levels to define this.