Loading a SNOMED CT edition
FerroTERM serves the SNOMED CT edition you load. This page explains the licensing rules you must satisfy first, and the planned build step that turns an RF2 release into the index the server reads.
You bring your own content
Warning
This repository ships no SNOMED CT content, and no build of FerroTERM contains any. SNOMED CT is licensed separately by SNOMED International. You must hold a valid SNOMED CT licence for the edition you load.
The split is firm, and you must keep the two apart:
- The software in this repository is open source under the MIT license.
- SNOMED CT content is the property of SNOMED International and is not distributed here.
A SNOMED CT licence is free within member countries, the Netherlands among them, and available under the affiliate licence elsewhere. You obtain the RF2 release for your edition from your national release centre or from SNOMED International, under your licence, and you load it into FerroTERM yourself.
The offline build (planned)
The running server never parses RF2 and never classifies the ontology. A separate tool turns an RF2 release into the memory-mapped index once per edition, and the server opens that index read-only.
graph LR
RF2["Licensed RF2 release<br/>(you provide)"] --> BUILD["ferroterm-build<br/>(offline)"]
BUILD --> IDX["ferroterm-index<br/>(graph + store + text)"]
IDX --> SRV["ferroterm<br/>(read-only)"]
The planned command takes the unpacked RF2 release and writes the index:
$ ferroterm-build --rf2 /path/to/SnomedCT_Release --out /path/to/ferroterm-index
The build computes the transitive closure from the shipped inferred relationship file, builds the CSR adjacency and the roaring closure bitmaps, writes the columnar concept and description store, and builds the text index. It runs once per release. When a new edition arrives, you rebuild the index and restart the server against it.
Note
The build tool is in design. The command name and flags above are the intended shape.
Test content
FerroTERM’s own tests use shaped, synthetic content only. They never contain real SNOMED CT concepts extracted from a release, which keeps the licence line clean in the repository itself.