ART-DECOR® – Release 3.9.1

Release notes 19 September 2025

Introduction

We are delighted to announce Release 3.9.1. 25 tasks were performed, and 25 bug fixes, partially based on client findings.

The focus topic on this release was to finalize and further consolidate our efforts for more performance and stability, a set of tasks that we started a time ago.

Thanks to all testers and people who submitted improvement suggestions! We are lucky to have you with us.

In total, 50 tickets were handled. This is the Release Note with more details.

General Remarks

As a summary, this release focuses on the following major topics: enhancements in the area of

• → Performance and stability,

• → Software Development / Tools features,

• → Datasets,

• → Terminology,

• → Questionnaires,

• → ADA,

• → Miscellaneous.

Please note also our section on Hints for Updating an ART-DECOR® Release for local installations.

Areas of New Features and Improvements

Performance and stability

The newly developed functionality in our API took over all functionalities that were originally located in the old DECOR service calls. While the DECOR service calls will remain available, those modules are now using the API to perform their tasks.

With these efforts we re-wrote many of the libraries and functions in the light of optimized load, compile, and cache mechanisms in the eXist database. This endeavour included – on main lines – the following tasks:

• We "re-constructed" the concept API [AD30-1954]
• We "re-constructed" the codesystem API [AD30-2004]
• We "re-constructed" compile functions in all artifacts [AD30-2016]
• We "re-constructed" the dataset API [AD30-2059]
• It was observed that PUT dataset was slow when inheriting concepts and offered poor performance which was fixed and re-tested [AD30-2062]
• Circulair use of namespace in our util-libs was resolved [AD30-2093]
• Mulitple Acceptance Test were performed for Release 3.9.1 [AD30-2057].

All these efforts pay off into a new user experience when working with ART-DECOR with higher performance and more stability. We are preparing a BLOG with details.

Software Development / Tools features

New Artifact Inspection and Download Feature

While we had several download or visualization buttons in the past, spread all over different bars and cards on the artifact panels, we now introduced a green Artifact Inspection and Download (AID) button located at prominent places in panels that offers all download and visualization options in context.

There is a dialog shown that offers all options in context, as an example here for Terminology Artifacts:

This includes native DECOR format downloads (with the download symbol before the type), native FHIR artifact download (only if FHIR is enabled for a project as service), HTML views (with the eye symbol) and other formats for download. The second figure shows also the PDF download and our new (but not yet fully fleshed-out) FSH (FHIR Short Hand) download options.

PDF generation

As mentioned before we now have implemented PDF creation at several places in the frontend UI [AD30-1615]. There is now the just mentioned AID button ("Artifact Inspection and Download") that allows artifact visualization, download and also the new PDF creation feature where applicable. PDF creation is also available for larger content [AD30-1702].

Further Achievements in this Release for Software Development / Tools features

• We fixed FHIR permissions as capabilitystatement failed [AD30-1969]
• We removed the unused Artlog package from software package repository [AD30-2053]
• sm:* functions needed parameter types xs:anyURI not xs:string which was changed where appropriate [AD30-2061]
• Tables within "property" caused freeze of ART-DECOR frontend, this has been fixed [AD30-2067]
• We reduced the time-to-run for old decor scripts [AD30-2071]
• Comments could not be deleted/edited, this was fixed [AD30-2117]
• History was not sorted in reverse order and offered poor performance, this has been fixed [AD30-2122]
• A smaller bug that PDF stretches its content on last page (Safari bug?) was fixed [AD30-2153]
• We set up an eXist-db .xar package repository for terminology packages [AD30-432].

Datasets

FHIR Export ART-DECOR Data Sets and Scenarios to FHIR Logical Models

We continued enhancing our set of FHIR features with exporting DECOR artifacts into FSH (FHIR Short Hand). The FSH specification, format and techniques gained enormous interest in the FHIR community when it comes to profiling and creation of other FHIR Artifacts. We have now options for FSH export for Data Sets and Scenarios into Logical Models, other artifacts as Value Sets, Code Systems, Naming Systems and Concept Maps are in preaparation.

The FHIR Export of ART-DECOR Datasets to FHIR Logical Models can now be done using the new AID button ("Artifact Inspection and Download") that allows artifact visualization, download and also PDF creation where applicable.

Exports can directly be used in FHIR Implementation Guide pipelines, one of the next features we will offer is to synchronize the artifacts with Github.

Further Achievements in this Release for Data Sets

• Data set examples are now handled correctly when emitted as FHIR Logical Models in FSH format [AD30-1924]
• Version label dataset and transaction editing options were revised [AD30-2009]
• Clicking to valueset from dataset concept did not work properly and has been fixed [AD30-2049]
• Renaming a dataset was broken and now works properly again [AD30-2069]
• Adding or Quick Adding a concept to a data set concept list had an ID error when adding more than 10 choices. This was reported by a customer (KBV/mio42) and has been fixed [AD30-2072]
• Dataset name change, status changes is now also visible in tree [AD30-2082]
• A message is now shown when the project language is temporarily changed while adding concepts in multi-lingual projects [AD30-2083]
• Codes and Codesystem Names to Value Sets are now shown in complete view of a Data Set [AD30-2136]
• An inheritance bug in createInheritContainsCommentForEdit was fixed [AD30-2141].

Terminology

We worked hard on more automatisms and pipeline processing for our Thirs Party CADTS Terminology Repositories and Packages [AD30-963]. We had a little focus on the CADTS technique for LOINC and SNOMED [AD30-1782, AD30-1783] as their pace of publishing releases increased and customer requirements were present to allow monthly package updates.

Further Achievements in this Release for Terminology

• We erased an AD2 regression where Value Set Code Associations lack of equivalency indication [AD30-1925]
• While working with Value Sets a user can now save Value Sets expansion sets [AD30-1958]
• The HTML view of terminology report was introduced upon client's request [AD30-2044]
• The behaviour for rewriting concepts with NullFlavor to exception was revised [AD30-2050]
• A bug was fixed when extracting multiple Value Sets [AD30-2064]
• The Terminology report with filter contained duplicate datasets which is now fixed [AD30-2065]
• A bug reporting "too many clauses" in the Terminology Report was fixed [AD30-2097]
• A problem with getting Concept Associations was fixed that was causes due to defect terminology packages and which shows up as "element has more than one attribute code" [AD30-2121]
• The situation got a fix where errors in a decor project could scramble the code system language dialog and made it unusable [AD30-2129].

Questionnaires

We add a more complete rendition of Questionnaire items in our HTML publications [AD30-1299]. Furthermore, we started to continue the extension of several Structured Data Capture (SDC) features for Questionnaires to offer more fancy features to users. Preparations are underway and the next big boost is awaited in Release 3.10.

ADA

ADA (ART-DECOR Application) is not widely used, but some governance groups base a heavy infrastructure on this satellite feature. ADA is primarily a tool for creating test data. There have been some updates to the ADA feature listed here.

• The situtaion that a user was unable to follow progress on ADA environment update was fixed [AD30-2092]
• An option was added to download ADA projects [AD30-2084].

Miscellaneous

• The HL7 Org OID Registry was update - including DICOMUID [AD30-2113]
• We made development releases visible in the project index [AD30-1690]
• We finally remove the outdated and experimental epsos- project from our main server art-decor.org [AD30-2068]. All of that lives since years in production at the EHDS ART-DECOR environment of the European Commission.
• ELGA reported a problem with testing and validation of the DTr1_II.sch where uppercase and lowercase UUIDs were handled incorrectly; this has been revised and fixed [AD30-2104]
• RetrieveConceptDiagram on Transaction groups had errors that have been erased from existence [AD30-1913]
• The DECOR project caching mechanism was rewritten and re-tested to handle duplicates more efficient and better serve test servers [AD30-2060]
• There was a review of the layout of the System Admin Functions Panel [AD30-2063].

Hints for Updating an ART-DECOR® Release for local installations

For all our hosted servers we do planned and announced updates of the server software regarding backend and frontend, comprised of ART-DECOR Vue and ART-DECOR http-proxy.

TIP

When you have a local installation of ART-DECOR and want to update to this release, please consider reading our Updating an ART-DECOR® Release documentation.

Thank you

A BIG thank you!

We are always thankful for any comments and suggestions.

Special thanks for the feedback regarding the Template Viewer and Editor to the colleagues from ELGA (Austria) and HL7 Italy / Ernst&Young (EY) and for Dataset and Questionnaire editor to the Berlin Institute of Health @ Charité team.

Especially in the terminology and questionnaire sector we got great feedback from the Dutch ICT Institute in Health Care (Nictiz). Thanks to Gunter Haroske working for the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Pathologie / German Association of Pathology pointing to shortcomings and missing features in our Questionnaire functions and to the Dutch Uitkomstgerichte Zorg Program for contributions in the same area.

Special thanks also to the mio42 GmbH team, Agence du Numérique en Santé (ANS) and our partners at Kereval / IHE Europe for testing, feature suggestions and bug fix requests.

Please don't hesitate to write us with suggestions for improvements or feature requests to our email address provided for this purpose: feedback@art-decor.org, also easily reachable through the Services Card at our ART-DECOR landing page (the link with the bulb 😃).

Outlook

Current development is heading towards Release 3.10 which focuses on further enhancements and features for Questionnaire Management. We might have an intermediate minor release 3.9.2 in between.

At the same time we are currently also working on the ART-DECOR Release 4 series. This will imply a big update on the frontend as we switch to Vue 3, also the backend will make use of the new eXist-db Database Release v6.4.0.

As you can see: more on that to come. Thank you for your patience. Stay tuned.