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  • 1.  Offer Versioning

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 20, 2020 19:35
    GB 922 gives the following guidance for versioning ProductSpecifications

    "As ProductSpecifications are upgraded, and as the market and technology move on, they are subject to version control."

    I am not seeing similar guidance at the ProductOffering level.

    Does such guidance exist in the TMForum library?
    Is it assumed the above good council would naturally extend to ProductOfferings?
    In general, is it better to version ProductOfferings or create net new when the ProductOfferings undergo minor changes in the marketplace?

    Some context to frame these questions:

    There are numerous minor changes an author may make to a ProductOffering that don't warrant a "new ProductOffering":
    - minor branding change
    - edits to descriptive text
    - addition of Characteristics that do not change the value proposition but may be useful for internal processing
    - introduction of new CharacteristicValues for Characteristics driving internal processing as described above.

    These would ideally be tagged as version changes so that consuming systems can make use of this information as needed. Does this require the systems to track ProductOffering identifiers as well as a versioning scheme or would ANY change result in a new ProductOffering identifier that is somehow linked to its predecessor?

    Or is this a "do what you want" scenario?

    #TMForumGeneral

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    Greg Herringer
    IBM Canada
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  • 2.  RE: Offer Versioning

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 22, 2020 08:04
    @Cecile Ludwichowski and @Dirk Rejahl might have something to say here, as co-leads of the SID team.
    I would suggest that you post SID-related queries in the Frameworx community here.

    But my $0.02 - each specific implementation of a catalog needs to decide how to implement its versioning policy, bearing in mind that software may be written to behave in a certain way according to versions, but also bearing in mind the community of users who will be authoring  offerings - marketing people - who may not necessarily be au fait with schemes such as http://semver.org/.

    Hope it helps

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
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  • 3.  RE: Offer Versioning

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jan 22, 2020 12:11
    Thank you @Jonathan Goldberg for the response and I agree that this will be implementation specific.  I will take your advice and post on the Frameworks community too - I should have posted there first but for some reason the "version" of my thinking at the time didn't bring to mind that community.

    Also​, thanks for the link to semver.org.

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    Greg Herringer
    IBM Corporation
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  • 4.  RE: Offer Versioning

    Posted Jun 29, 2021 13:19
    Hi,

    Please refer the below blog. You may have an idea on Semantic Versioning.
    https://www.meritedin.com/robust-api.html

    Please don't forget to take a look on the videos listed on their playlist.

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    sowthri ganth
    TO BE VERIFIED
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  • 5.  RE: Offer Versioning

    TM Forum Member
    Posted Jun 30, 2021 02:44
    Thanks Sowthri
    Greg's post was actually not addressing API versioning, but rather versioning of catalog elements, he specifically mentioned Product Offerings.
    There are many considerations regarding versioning of catalogs and how this impacts the runtime consumers of the catalog. For example:
    • How to deal with pending orders that were based on a previous version of a catalog item
    • If and how to upgrade inventory items when their catalog originating item is updated to a new version
    These are not necessarily the same considerations as for API versioning.

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    Jonathan Goldberg
    Amdocs Management Limited
    Any opinions and statements made by me on this forum are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the TM Forum or my employer.
    ------------------------------