Release 5

This page is part of the FHIR Specification (v5.0.0: R5 - STU). This is the current published version. For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions . Page versions: R5 R4B R4

FHIR Infrastructure icon Work Group Maturity Level: N/A Standards Status: Informative

All of the interactions defined in the RESTful API are described as synchronous operations - that is, the client makes a query and waits for the server to respond with the outcome in the HTTP response. This pattern is not always suitable when significant server side processing is necessary or when substantial amounts of data must be returned.

A good example of this is the $export operation icon, where simple searches may result in large amounts of data.

The asynchronous request patterns, based on rfc 7240 icon, cater to this use case and can be used for FHIR Defined Interactions and Operations.