Student Conference Proceedings
Vol. 2 No. 1 (2026): Stud Conf Proc
https://doi.org/10.18416/SCP.2026.2555
ucumate: A Java Library for Units of Measure
Main Article Content
Copyright (c) 2026 Felix Naumann; Joshua Wiedekopf, Michael Lawley
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
Healthcare informatics relies on standards for interoperability. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is the standard for data exchange and it recommends the usage of the Unified Code for Units ofMeasure (UCUM) standard for representing units of quantities. Yet, existing parsing libraries suffer from incomplete edge case handling and performance limitations, creating reliability issues for production applications. This work developed ucumate, a standalone modern Java UCUM library, integrated into the terminology server Ontoserver. The implementation employed ANTLR4 for grammar-based parsing, a data-oriented programming paradigm for type safety, and comprehensive testing against both standard and custom test suites covering previously unhandled edge cases. The resulting library demonstrates 40x faster canonicalization and conversion operations compared to existing solutions, achieves full compliance withUCUMspecifications, and successfully integrates withOntoserver’s terminology processing pipeline. These improvements establish a robust foundation for UCUM processing in production healthcare environments.