Minor Versions vs. Major Versions

SOA Governance and API Management : Getting Started with CentraSite : Implementation Concepts : Managing Virtualized Services : Revising a Virtual Service : Minor Versions vs. Major Versions

Minor and Major versions of Web services are described as follows:

Minor version. A Minor version is a version that is compatible with all consumers of the existing virtual service. That is, the changes in a Minor version do not “break” the existing applications that use the service. Examples of changes for a Minor version include:

Bug fixes

Performance improvements

The addition of a supporting document

The addition of operations (as long as it does not break the existing applications)

A change in the Description attribute

Major version. A Major version is a version that is incompatible with consumers of the existing virtual service. That is, the changes in a Major version “break” the existing applications that use the service. Examples of a Major version include:

Modifications to the namespace assignments

Modifications to message descriptions

Modifications to interface definitions and/or operation signatures in the service WSDL

Changes to the implementation of the service that do not explicitly affect the WSDL, but nevertheless affect the way in which an existing consumer application interacts with the service

For example, a service that returns an expanded set of result codes or generates a different form of customer ID might break an existing consumer application even if the interface defined in the service WSDL did not change.

Note:

Be aware that sometimes versioning one asset will necessitate the versioning of another. For example, if an XML schema changes and that schema is imported by a Web service, you will need to generate a new version of the XML schema and a new version of the Web service that references it.

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