#### Distribution Envelope
Domain Message Specification

### Distribution Envelope

The Distribution Envelope is the transport wrapper used to carry ITK content.

The following table documents all the elements and attributes of the Distribution Envelope and the restrictions placed on them for use with ITK content.

Name | Cardinality | Data Type | Description
--- | --- | --- | ---
header | 1..1 |  | Distribution envelope header.
@Service | 1..1 | URI | The service under which this transmission is sent. This should be populated with a service name taken from the service listing in the "ITK Implementation" page of the Domain Message Specification.
@trackingid | 1..1 | UUID | A unique identifier for this transmission. This is a DCE UUID generated by the sender that is used as a tracking identifier for the transmission.
addresslist | 0..1 |  | A list of recipient addresses, which indicate the end-to-end business destination of the distribution.
address | 1..* |  | A business delivery address URI.
@type | 0..1 | String | The format of address used. (default= "2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.3.2.4.18.22", which indicates an ITK address format). Other addressing formats are supported, but these are generally used by local agreement. For sending an inter-organisational transmission, the default ITK address format should be used.
@uri | 1..1 | URI | The actual business delivery address for this transmission. Further addressing guidance is given in the latest version of the "Interoperability Toolkit Addressing and Routing Requirements".
auditidentity | 0..1 |  | An auditable reference for the sender. Examples could include an ITK format audit identity, a spine smart-card authentication etc. This attribute is used by middleware to audit the sending of transmissions.
id | 1..4 |  | Up to 4 levels of identity are allowed to identify the sender. For example the 1st identity could be a person, 2nd their role, and 3rd the responsible organisation.
@type | 0..1 | String | The format of audit identity used. (default= "2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.3.2.4.18.27", which indicates an ITK identity format). Other audit identity formats are supported, but these are generally used by local agreement. For sending an inter-organisational transmission, the default ITK identity format should be used.
@uri | 1..1 | URI | The actual audit identification.
manifest | 1..1 |  | Technical details of each payload. It is mandatory that each payload has a Manifest entry in the distribution envelope.
@count | 1..1 | Integer | A count of the number of payloads being described. This must match the payloads.count attribute.
manifestitem | 1..* |  | There must be one manifestitem per payload.
@id | 1..1 | XS:IDREF | The id of the payload being described. This must match the payload.id attribute. The recommended format for id is to use a DCE UUID prefixed with "uuid_". For example id="uuid_A570ED3C-3D67-11E2-9389-A28C6188709B".
@mimetype | 1..1 | String | The mime type of the payload. The mime-type should be set to "text/xml".
@profileid | 1..1 | URI | The identification of a description of the versionable artefacts of a payload. Not all payloads will have a profileId - for example an image may not have any versionable artefacts. For more structured payloads such as a CDA document, this will document versionable payload artefacts such as vocabularies and templates. The profileId should be populated with a profile from this specification.
@metadata | 0..1 | Boolean | A flag to indicate whether the payload being described is the metadata content payload (default="false"). Metadata will be in an IHE conformant format.
@compressed | 0..1 | Boolean | A flag to indicate whether the payload is compressed (default="false"). The only supported compression routine is gZip.
@base64 | 0..1 | Boolean | A flag to indicate whether the payload is in base64 format (default="false").
@encrypted | 0..1 | Boolean | A flag to indicate whether the payload is encrypted (default="false").
senderAddress | 0..1 |  | The sender's address. This provides an address for acknowledgements.
@type | 0..1 | String | The format of address used. (default= "2.16.840.1.113883.2.1.3.2.4.18.22", which indicates an ITK address format). Other addressing formats are supported, but these are generally used by local agreement. For sending an inter-organisational transmission, the default ITK address format should be used.
@uri | 1..1 | URI | The actual delivery address for the acknowledgement. This is the return address for infrastructural acknowledgements for example.
handlingSpecifications | 0..1 |  | An extensible list of handling requirements - such as send business ACK, interaction IDs etc. This list is expected to grow over time. Each specification and the values it can take will be documented outside this document.
spec | 1..* |  | A set of key / value pair to represent a handling specification.
@key | 1..1 | URI | Specification Key (such as send business ACK). For example, to request a Business Acknowledgement "urn:nhs:itk:ns:201005:ackrequested".
@value | 1..1 | String | Value for the key (such as "true").
payloads | 1..1 |  | The payloads. A variety of content types can be carried, as described by the manifest.
@count | 1..1 | Integer | A count of the number of payloads (must match manifest.count).
payload | 1..* |  | The actual payloads.
@id | 1..1 | XS:ID | The unique identifier of a payload (must match manifestItem.id).
@filename | 0..1 | String | The file name under which the extracted payload should be saved. The filename has been excluded since files are not permitted.