Introduction
This page details the NHS Booking Standard approach to versioning and release management.
Lifecycle
This diagram shows the NHS Booking Standards lifecycle.
Discovery and Elaboration
- New Requirement/s Emerge
- Requirement Elaborated
Uplift
- Standard Uplifted
- Articfacts Uplifted
- Swagger - Interface Definition
- Testing Toolkit
- SCAL
- Booking Standard Site Uplifted
- FHIR NHS Booking API Uplifted
Review
- Uplift Reviewed
Versioning
- Standard Version Incremented
- Standard Marked As Pre-release
Publishing (Pre-Release)
- Booking Standard Published
- FHIR NHS Booking API Published
- Artefacts Published
External Review
- Suppliers Engaged
- Supplier Feedback
- Optional - Back to Discovery and Elaboration
Publishing (Alpha/Beta/Public)
- Booking Standard Published
- FHIR NHS Booking API Published
- Artefacts Published
Versioning
The NHS Booking standard will follow Semantic Versioning, i.e. a three-part version number consisting of major, minor and patch versions. There will also be support for pre-releases versioning by use of ALPHA and BETA extensions
Full details can be found at the Semantic Versioning site, however, here are the key points.
Major version
The major version is incremented when an incompatible changes is made, i.e. a non backwards compatible change.
Minor version
The minor version increments when changes are made in a backwards compatible manner.
Patch version
The patch version is incremented when backwards compatible bug fixes are implemented in the standard.
Extensions
The extensions ALPHA and BETA will be used to indicate the maturity of a pre-release version of the standard.
Associated technical artefacts
The following artefacts will be released as part standard, taking the same version number as the specification.
FHIR
The current version of the NHS Booking Standard 0.1.16 ALPHA is aligned to FHIR R3, however, from release 2.0.0 the standard will been aligned to FHIR UK Core, which in turn is based on FHIR R4
Provider Requirements
-
Providers MUST support multiple versions of the NHS Booking Standard.
-
Providers MUST support a minimum of 2 NHS Booking Standard versions, this support MUST when appropriate include support for multiple Major Version iterations.
-
Providers MUST support a superseded NHS Booking Standard version for a minimum of 6 months, this MUST when appropriate include support for multiple Major Version iterations.
-
Providers MUST specify their version support in their Capability Statement
Consumer Requirements
- Consumers MUST use the Provider’s Capability Statement to establish the version/s of the NHS Booking Standard supported by the Provider.
