How multiple versions of the the NHS Booking Standard will be managed and published.

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  • Providers MUST support a superseded NHS Booking Standard version for a minimum of 6 months, this MUST when appropriate include support for multiple Major Version iterations.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.