RE: [ubl-dev] Customising and versioning

["Marc de Graauw" <marc@marcdegraauw.com>]

Fraser Goffin:

| Personally I wouldn't change a namespace for a minor revision. A
| namespace change is a 'breaking' change and means that implementers
| end up having to either a) upgrade their processing logic, and/or b)
| support multiple concurrent versions which have much greater churn.

+1 on this one.

A common scenario for a minor release is added functionality which not every
exchange partner uses. We once proposed changing namespaces for minor
versions, but this means exchange partners which do not use the added stuff
need to use new schemas. And this requires testing the interfaces again. I
don't think it is realistic (unless you can force them) to expect exchange
partners to test their interfaces when there is no added value at all for
them. In principle those tests could be simple and mostly automated, in
practice in larger organizations tests are not automated and testing a set
of interfaces is a big and expensive job.

Marc