January 2, 2008

README: RxNorm 01/02/2008 Full Update Release
===================================================

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This Full release contains data that is consistent with the 
2007AC version of the UMLS.   
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This release contains updates to the following seven sources:

GS - 12/11/2007 (Gold Standard Alchemy)
MDDB - 12/12/2007 (Master Drug Data Base. Medi-Span, a division of Wolters Kluwer Health) 
MMSL - 12/01/2007 (Multum MediSource Lexicon) 
MMX - 12/3/2007  (Micromedex DRUGDEX)
MTHFDA - 11/07/2007 (FDA National Drug Code Directory)
MTHSPL - 12/17/2007 (FDA Structured Product Labels) 
NDDF - 12/07/2007 (First DataBank NDDF Plus Source Vocabulary)

This release does not contain updates to these sources:

SNOMED CT - 07/31/2007 (SNOMED Clinical Terms (drug information). SNOMED International)
VANDF - 08/21/2007 (Veterans Health Administration National Drug File)

For full details, please refer to the RxNorm documentation at 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm/docs/index.html.

In addition, this release contains database control files and SQL
commands for use in the automation of the loading process of
these files into a RDBMS (Oracle in this case). 
 
RxNorm release data files are available by download from 
the UMLS Knowledge Source Server (UMLSKS) at:

  http://umlsks.nlm.nih.gov

Use the "RxNorm Files" link, under the "Downloads" category on
the UMLSKS home page.

This link will take you to a page for downloading the latest files: 
RxNorm_full_01022008.zip

This RxNorm update is available only through the UMLSKS server.  Once
downloaded, it must be unzipped in order to access the files.

HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE RECOMMENDATIONS
-------------------------------------
- Supported operating systems:
	Windows: XP, 2000, NT
	Linux
	Solaris: Solaris 8 and 9 
        Macintosh OS 9 or OS 10 

- Hardware Requirements

  - A MINIMUM 484 MB of free hard disk space (To accomodate ZIP files and 
	unzipped contents).  


CONTENTS OF THE ZIP FILE
-------------------------

The ZIP formatted file is 57,211,906 bytes and contains the 
following 19 files and 2 directories:

	Readme_Full_01022008.txt	3,258		bytes

rrf directory:

	RXNCONSO.RRF			80,621,752	bytes
	RXNDOC.RRF			150,698		bytes
	RXNREL.RRF			83,489,176	bytes
	RXNSAB.RRF			5,750		bytes		
        RXNSAT.RRF			239,741,696	bytes 
	RXNSTY.RRF			11,815,846	bytes
	RXNATOMARCHIVE.RRF		21,478,045	bytes
	RXNCUICHANGES.RRF		117,028		bytes

scripts directory:

	RXNATOMARCHIVE.ctl		564		bytes
	RXNCONSO.ctl			512		bytes
	RXNCUICHANGES.ctl		346		bytes
	RXNDOC.ctl			248		bytes
	RXNREL.ctl			472		bytes
	RXNSAB.ctl			674		bytes	
	RXNSAT.ctl			376		bytes
	RXNSTY.ctl			267		bytes
	RxNormDDL.sql			3,125		bytes
	populate_oracle_rxn_db.bat	1,088		bytes
	
	
Additional NOTES:
-----------------

- Most RxNorm users will need applications and data management
  systems such as an RDBMS for storage and retrieval.

- The RxNorm release files contain UTF-8 Unicode encoded data.

- Refer to the RxNorm release documentation at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/rxnorm/docs/index.html for information on the contents of the RxNorm Release Files