Versioning

[Matthew Graham]

Hi,

You might be aware that the Document Standards v1.2 PR has just  
completed its RFC (http://www.ivoa.net/cgi-bin/twiki/bin/view/IVOA/DocStdRFC2 
). I raised concerns about the proposed versioning scheme:

"The document now states that there is an integer increment in the  
version number in the case where subsequent versions are not backward  
compatible. "

and the response that has been posted is:

"The Committee agrees that the version numbering scheme is challenging  
when dealing with namespaces and WSDL, and leads to the conclusion  
that when IVOA standards describe web services or have associated XML  
schemas, with namespaces that when changed, cause software to break,  
then these changes must both be accompanied by an increment to the  
integer part of the document and the associated "supplementary" files.  
This would not affect most of the standards documents, and should not  
present any real logistical difficulty, as there are a sufficient  
number of integers available to support any number of revisions. "

This has greatest impact for this working group (GWS but I am also  
cross-posting to Semantics)  and essentially means that ALL (WD, PR,  
etc) versions of our specs with WSDL/XML/RDF documents (anything with  
a namespace) will only carry integer versions.

So, for example, the progression of VOSpace 2.0 would actually proceed  
as:

VOSpace 2 (first WD)
VOSpace 3 (second WD)
VOSpace 4 (third WD)
VOSpace 5 (first PR)
VOSpace 6 (second PR)
VOSpace 7 (final PR)
VOSpace 8 (REC)

The next version would then VOSpace 9, etc.

Although this is very much a procedural issue, I just wanted to flag  
it so that everyone is aware and happy with it before I approve.

	Cheers,

	Matthew