As an example of how this tree structure might be used, consider an application producing a large Inventory. It creates an Inventory SOP Instance, and begins filling it with inventoried Study records. At some point, it reaches a size constraint, completes that object, and begins creation of a second object. That second object includes a link to the first one, and the application fills it with Study records until it, too, reaches its limit. The process repeats with a third object, and so on until the inventory is complete (see Figure YYYY.3-3). The last object becomes the root of the tree of the complete inventory.

Note that in the first and second objects, the Scope of Inventory will be the same as in the final object, but the Completion Status of PARTIAL indicates that the sets of inventoried studies in their subtrees do not fulfil that Scope. (The subtree of the first object is just itself, the subtree of the second object is itself and the first, etc.)