Project Versioning

When you create a project, it is assigned a version number that is used to control the compatibility requirements between projects, and to indicate revisions to the project. The version number is shown after the project name in Project Explorer (for example, Insurance v1.0).

The version number consists of a major number and a minor number. The format for a version number is:

major.minor

You lock a project for deployment to a production server. When more work is required in the project, you create a new draft and the minor version number is incremented.

Note: Dependent projects depend on a minimum of the major.minor version of the project in the current workspace. This is the minimum version that must be deployed before or with the dependent project in order to successfully deploy the dependent project.

If you wish to make a backwards incompatible change (for example, remove business data from a class, or change the type of some business data), you must update the major version number of a project before you can successfully deploy it. This is in order that existing deployed applications that depend upon the items in the project are not broken by this backwards incompatible change. Right-click the project, then select Properties > Lifecycle and then click Increment Major Version.

After incrementing the major version and deploying this project, existing projects that depend on it will not use the new version until they are re-generated and deployed. Increment the major version only if you need to make changes to this project that are not backward-compatible.

Example of Versioning

You have a simple application with a data project and a process project.
  • Create the projects. They are versioned 1.0.
  • Develop and test these projects until you are ready to put your app into production for real end users to use. You then lock them for production and deploy them to a production server.
  • You decide to make some changes later to add some extra data for your users to enter. So you create a new draft of your data project (which becomes 1.1) and add the necessary attributes for the new data.
  • Create a new draft of your process project and configure the new data on a user form.
  • Your process project now depends on the new version of the data project 1.1 and will not deploy to a development or production server unless the data project version 1.1 is deployed first or at the same time.