A repository may have multiple Application Entities, with distinct DICOM protocol addresses (AE Titles). One common use is a PACS that has multiple separate archive subsystems, each of which supports DICOM protocol services (for example, as shown in Figure YYYY.3-4).

Another use for multiple AE Titles may be to provide separate views of the repository, and hence separate inventory content, for restricted subsets of the stored data. For example, the repository may include data that has patient consent for research use and data without such consent. This distinction does not have an associated Key Attribute for the Scope of Inventory. The system may therefore present one AE Title for operations on the entire repository, and a different AE Title for operations only on the research qualified data. This approach could be used for any other subsets of the repository that the system manages, but for which there is no standard Key Attribute for the Scope of Inventory.

A similar use of multiple AE Titles may provide separate views of the repository to different sets of users. An example of this is described in the next section for views of the Patient ID.

If the SCP for the Inventory Creation Service (see Section YYYY.3.2) provides separate data subsets for different AE Titles, the name for the subset may be encoded in the Station Name (0008,1010) or the Inventory Instance Description (0008,0402) Attribute.