If you don't understand, Please ASK!

I really like it when someone asks a question. Especially when that question uncovers something that seems obvious but clearly isn't. There have been quite a few of them in the past few weeks. I am sure there will be far more in the future. I like investigating questions in the same way that I liked to debug code. A question where it seems obvious is not unlike a bug in code where the programmer thought they did it right. I recognize that I might be special, as most people I talk to hate to debug code.

I must give credit to the one asking the questions lately. Mostly the questions are coming from Grahame. big effort to rewrite Volume 3 documentation on the metadata we didn't fix many of them, I am not sure if we fixed any of them. So there will be a pile of Change Proposals queued up this winter/spring.

When I ask him why he is just now asking questions about XDS when I know he has worked with XDS for many years. He responded that now that he is doing the work to incorporate XDS into FHIR he knows that he will be answering questions, therefore he needs to feel very strong about the details. Grahame has uncovered many issues with XDS documentation that I am sure most of us on the core of IHE-ITI simply figured were properly documented. Clearly even with the

This kind of questioning should have happened during the IHE Process,

specifically "Public Comment" and/or "Trial Implementation". This is the time when changes are expected. This is the time when it is expected that the documentation is incomplete or even that the chosen solution is wrong. This is the time when those that are developing their solutions to their read of the Supplement, and bringing their solution to Connectathon. This is why IHE requires three independently developed solutions before a Profile can become "Final Text". But this is NOT the only time that something can be wrong, and why IHE has a "Change Proposal" system.

The influx of questions is from a new set of people, that come with different perspectives. Please feel free to ask questions. This is not to say you won't be told to "Read The Friendly Manual". So, when you ask your question please tell us that you have already RTFM and found it confusing or wrong.