Versioning

[Matthew Graham]

Hi Doug,

The standards documents says:

"The number to the left of the (first) decimal point starts with 0 for  
documents that are being discussed within a Working Group prior to  
publication for IVOA-wide review.  The number increments to 1 for the  
first public version, and to 2, 3, ..., for subsequent versions that  
are not backward compatible and/or require substantial revisions to  
implementations."

The definition of a Working Draft is:

"A Working Draft is published at the discretion of a Working Group  
once the WG is satisfied that the document is sufficiently developed  
to merit broader exposure and feedback"

So I think that a Working Draft fulfils the "IVOA-wide review"  
criterion.

If the integer progression is only a prerequisite for REC versions  
then the standards document needs to be amended to say this.

	Cheers,

	Matthew


On Jul 2, 2009, at 10:52 AM, Doug Tody wrote:

> If this were true I agree it would be crazy.  But is a WD or PR a
> "standard"?  I should think this would only apply to established
> standards that are already deployed.  That is, to recommendations.
> Perhaps the documents and standards folks should clarify.
>
> Also, I don't think this is just limited to GWS; any DAL or DM  
> standard
> for example might also have to deal with this issue.
>
> 	- Doug
>
>
> On Thu, 2 Jul 2009, Matthew Graham wrote:
>
>> 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
>>
>