Overview of Metaphrase Java API [Common Tasks] [Glossary] [Package] [Index]

The Metaphrase^® Enterprise Vocabulary System (EVS) is a family of middleware components which help create, enhance, maintain, and support standardized vocabularies for healthcare organizations. Metaphrase Enabled^® applications incorporate Lexical Technology's advanced terminology search engine, allowing them to quickly and easily convert casual input to authoritative terms.

The Metaphrase Java API allows you to create your own Metaphrase Enabled applications, tailored to meet your specific vocabulary needs. The Metaphrase Java API enables your applications to access, browse, and navigate through Lexical Technology's Metaphrase Thesaurus.

The Thesaurus forms the foundation of the EVS. Unlike a "dictionary" view to terminology, the Metaphrase model is based on a thesaurus. Like other thesauri, the Metaphrase Thesaurus is organized around concepts, each of which can have many names (synonyms), rather than around terms themselves.

With nearly 1,400,000 terms and 660,000 concepts, the Metaphrase Thesaurus draws on Lexical's ten years of experience with the National Library of Medicine (NLM). The Thesaurus begins with the NLM's Unified Medical Language System^® (UMLS^®) Metathesaurus^®, a comprehensive integration of more than 40 authoritative coding and terminology systems used in all aspects of healthcare. Lexical enhances the Metathesaurus with additional drug information, medical definitions and semiannual updates.

The Metaphrase Java API contains the class libraries used in all Metaphrase applications for interacting with the Metaphrase Thesaurus. There are currently two Metaphrase Java APIs available: the Metaphrase Update API and the Metaphrase Query API. The Metaphrase Update API consists of the core Metaphrase Query API, with addition of an editing interface, GoodEnoughUpdate, and its implementation, RMIUpdater, which extends RMIMetaphrase.

Incorporating the Metaphrase Query API into an application allows a user to:
• Connect to a Metaphrase Thesaurus server.
• Browse through terms and concepts.
• Search for concepts by term or code.
• Navigate between concepts using relationships and cooccurrences.
• View concept terms, semantic types, definitions, relationships and contexts in various configurations.

Incorporating the Metaphrase Update API into an application allows a user to:
• Connect to a Metaphrase Thesaurus server.
• Create new sources.
• Create new concepts.
• Add new concept elements (atoms, semantic types, definitions, and relationships) to concepts.
• Merge concepts.
• Split concepts.
• Delete concepts and concept elements.
• Move concept elements from one concept to another.