# Mandatory description at Term_definition

**Category:** [Technical (archive)](https://discourse.openehr.org/c/technical-archive/156)
**Created:** 2012-03-22 11:39 UTC
**Views:** 2
**Replies:** 0
**URL:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/mandatory-description-at-term-definition/14385

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## Post #1 by @system

Hi,

At the Term_definition section of the ADL specifications (1.4 and 1.5), we can read that "Each term is defined using a structure of name/value pairs, and must at least include the names “text” and “description”, which are akin to the usual rubric, and full definition found in terminologies like SNOMED-CT".

Although being in essence true, we can find examples where de description part is not needed. For example, at the openEHR-EHR-OBSERVATION.lab_test-histopathology.v1, we can see:

["at0074"] = <
text = <"Aborted">
description = <"*">
>

The "*" is the default value inserted by the archetype editor. Shouldn't have more sense to make description a not mandatory field? For very simple data items probably it will not be needed. This also applies to the constraint_definition that follows the same structure.

David

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**Canonical:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/mandatory-description-at-term-definition/14385
**Original content:** https://discourse.openehr.org/t/mandatory-description-at-term-definition/14385