Delete History Version Feature: INTERACTION_DELETE_HISTORY_VERSION Since 1.14.0

CAUTION

The delete history version interaction is currently alpha and has to be enabled explicitly by setting the env var ENABLE_INTERACTION_DELETE_HISTORY_VERSION to true. Please don't use it in production. Please be aware that the database might not be able to migrate to a newer version of Blaze if the operation was used.

CAUTION

The delete history version interaction is trial use in the unreleased next version of FHIR. So it is subject to change. Please use it with care.

The delete history version interaction removes a single historical version of a resource. The current version can't be removed by this interaction.

DELETE [base]/[type]/[id]/_history/[vid]

NOTE

Blaze runs all writes as transactions one at a time in a single total order (actual serial execution). A transaction can only start once the previous one has finished, so a large transaction blocks all smaller ones — including this delete history version — until it completes. See Actual Serial Execution for details.

On success, Blaze returns a 204 No Content without a body.

Deleting a historical version of a resource means that this version can no longer be accessed. Subsequent versioned reads of that version will return a 404 Not Found. The version is also removed from the instance history, the type history and the system history. All other versions of the resource stay accessible. Only active paging sessions and asynchronous requests started before the delete history version interaction will be able to access the deleted version for a limited amount of time.

The delete history version interaction is idempotent: deleting a version that doesn't exist or was already deleted has no effect and also returns a 204 No Content. The same applies to a resource that doesn't exist at all.

All versions of a resource except the current version can be deleted at once via the delete history interaction.

The delete history version interaction can also be used in batches and transactions. A transaction can delete several versions of the same resource, but each version only once, and can't combine that with other actions on the resource. Deleting the current version fails the whole transaction with a 409 Conflict. Its response entry carries the status 204 without an ETag, because deleting a version doesn't create a new one.

Internal Resources

Resources Blaze owns itself can carry the security label internal with the system https://blaze-server.org/fhir/CodeSystem/AccessControl in meta.security. No historical version of such a resource can be deleted. Blaze returns a 409 Conflict with an OperationOutcome instead. In a transaction, such an entry fails the whole transaction.

Handling Errors

Status Code	Description
400 Bad Request	The id or the version id given in the URL is invalid. Both are restricted to 64 characters of A-Z, a-z, 0-9, - and ..
409 Conflict	The given version is the current version of the resource, which can't be deleted by this interaction.
409 Conflict	The resource is an internal resource, whose historical versions can't be deleted.

All error responses contain an OperationOutcome with details in the body.