[FEEDBACK] - Specifying string forms of topic names might be overly prescriptive

[KeithDuddyS23M]

Summary

In the section on Topics and Subscriptions the follow text occurs with a MUST:

Different topic items MUST be separated by a / as opposed to any form of concatenation such as {domain}-{action} to support subscription filtering across different consumption protocols.💡

Unless you have narrowed down the set of event-based middleware to a particular set of choices where this always works, then it seems overly prescriptive. Some MOM doesn't necessarily provide a string form for topic names, and these are specified as data structures. If using strings as abbreviations for these structures may be best done using a standard separator "/", for documentation purposes, I can see the rationale. Maybe I'm assuming that some old event-driven tech is still in the Health environment which is not there, or no longer supported for new implementations that this standard covers?

Also, it seems strange that the heading "Recommendations" contains the mandatory language "MUST". Perhaps it should be re-titled "Design Rules"?

Link to standards item

https://apistandards.digital.health.nz/api-development/Asynchronous%20APIs/TopicDesign/#recommendations

Which area of the standards does this apply to?

• Part A - API Concepts
• Part B - API Security
• Part C - API Design and Development
• Part D - FHIR
• Community guidelines