Reject Long Identifier

Review ask

As a clinical trial statistician or programmer, challenge anything in this benchmark: describe a problem in Comments, or propose a fix with the Edit button on any source file.

Task: Is this a specification error a study team could realistically make, and should the build stop on it rather than continue?
Inputs: Do they trigger the failure for the reason the summary gives?
Expected failure: Is this the right error, raised at the right point, and would it tell the programmer what to fix?

The other tabs beside Comments are background for assessment, not under review.

Summary

EditUnder reviewWhat this benchmark means

README.md

Goal: build one demographics record per subject, carrying the unique subject identifier (USUBJID) and the site identifier (SITEID).

Input: collected demographics records, each carrying the study identifier, the site identifier (SITEID) and the subject number (SUBJID).

Variables:

USUBJID would be the study, site and subject identifiers joined by hyphens, such as CATH-UCSD-0001; a record missing any of the three parts stops the run.
SITEID would be the study site identifier, as collected.

Note: the subject identifier must fit in 20 characters on every record. A site identifier long enough to push it past that limit rejects the run after the dataset completes, so no artifact is accepted.

How to fix

Decide which is authoritative: the width the study declares, or the site identifier the data carries. If the site identifier can be shortened at source, correct it there, so that every dataset referring to the subject keeps one value:

CATH,0003,STMARY

If the long site identifier is correct, raise the declared width to one that fits the longest value the study can produce, and change it wherever the subject identifier is described:

- name: USUBJID
  type: str
  derivation:
    str_concat:
      sources:
        - source: DM_RAW.STUDYID
        - literal: '-'
        - source: DM_RAW.SITEID
        - literal: '-'
        - source: DM_RAW.SUBJID
  verifications:
    - max_length:
        max: 30

Do not lower the bound below the values the study produces merely to make this input pass. A subject identifier that no longer fits its stated width is a defect wherever it is carried.

Expected failure

Editthe run is rejected; no artifact is accepted

expected/error.yaml

phase: verification
condition: length_failed
requirement: REQ-0378

expected/error.yaml

phase: verification
condition: length_failed
spec_paths:
  - columns.USUBJID.verifications[0].max_length
requirement: REQ-0378
context:
  column: USUBJID
  max: 20
  failure_count: 1
  keys:
    - STUDYID: CATH
      USUBJID: CATH-STMARYSMONTREAL-0003

YAML specification

1 spec file

spec.yaml

Edit44 lines

1schema_version: "1.0"2domain: DM3keys: [STUDYID, USUBJID]4input:5  DM_RAW: input/dm_raw.csv67output:8  path: dm.csv9  columns: [STUDYID, USUBJID, SUBJID, SITEID]1011columns:12  - name: STUDYID13    type: str14    label: Study Identifier15    derivation: DM_RAW.STUDYID1617  - name: USUBJID18    type: str19    label: Unique Subject Identifier20    # STUDYID-SITEID-SUBJID. With no missing: value, a record missing any21    # part stops the run.22    derivation:23      str_concat:24        sources:25          - source: DM_RAW.STUDYID26          - literal: '-'27          - source: DM_RAW.SITEID28          - literal: '-'29          - source: DM_RAW.SUBJID30    # A long site identifier pushes the joined value past 20 characters,31    # which fails once the dataset is complete.32    verifications:33      - max_length:34          max: 203536  - name: SUBJID37    type: str38    label: Subject Identifier for the Study39    derivation: DM_RAW.SUBJID4041  - name: SITEID42    type: str43    label: Study Site Identifier44    derivation: DM_RAW.SITEID

Inputs

Under review1 source file

input/dm_raw.csv

Edit3 rows

input/dm_raw.csv
STUDYID	SUBJID	SITEID
CATH	0001	UCSD
CATH	0002	MCGILL
CATH	0003	STMARYSMONTREAL

Unexpected Output

Under reviewNo artifact is produced

No fixture files in this directory.

Shaded columns are derived— = missing value

Comments and assessment materials

Variable Name	Variable Label	Type	Origin	Conversion Definition	Variable Type	Variable Order
STUDYID	Study Identifier	Char	Collected	Copy value from DM_RAW.STUDYID.	SDTM	1
USUBJID	Unique Subject Identifier	Char	Derived	Concatenate DM_RAW.STUDYID, "-", DM_RAW.SITEID, "-" and DM_RAW.SUBJID.	SDTM	2
SUBJID	Subject Identifier for the Study	Char	Collected	Copy value from DM_RAW.SUBJID.	SDTM	3
SITEID	Study Site Identifier	Char	Collected	Copy value from DM_RAW.SITEID.	SDTM	4

Version	Date	Author	Description
1.3	2026-09-29	yamaa docs build	Show study codelist names, external dictionaries, and ISO 8601 formats in variable rows; list the document's codelist values and metadata
1.2	2026-09-29	yamaa docs build	Classify ADaM copies from a declared input as Predecessor and recodes as Derived, and SDTM recodes of locally derived columns as Derived
1.1	2026-09-29	yamaa docs build	Resolve lookups into the donor record they select, and give every derivation shape a plain-language rule instead of its raw YAML
1.0		yamaa docs build	Initial generation from spec.yaml

How to fix

input/dm_raw.csv

Comments

Mapping spec