Product Life Cycle
Key
- Product Maintenance Period, Version Support Period
- General Availability
- The General Availability release is usually the first release with a given major or minor version number, i.e. version 1.7.0 which replaces version 1.6.x.
- Ongoing bug-fix releases for major / minor versions are counted as 1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3 etc.. From version 1.7.0 onwards, and in contrast with practice up to and including version 1.6.x, bug-fix releases will not contain improvements or new features but will be restricted to bug-fixes, ensuring compatibility of the release to its predecessor as closely as possible.
- End of Life Announcement
- SOS announces the date of the Last Public Bug-fix Release approx. 6 months in advance.
- Last Public Bug-fix Release
- This date marks the end of Product Maintenance for a release. After this date bug-fixes will only be provided to customers who subscribe to Version Support.
- End of Life
- Bug-fixes for a release will not be provided after this date.
- Customers with an ongoing support contract can benefit from 1st and 2nd level support (root cause analysis, configuration issues etc.), however, no 3rd level support (code modifications) is provided.
Releases
The End of Life for product releases is (as of Aug 2014) as follows:
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Product Support is a service for all customers that provides bug-fixes starting from the General Availability date up to the Latest Last Public Bug-fix Release.
- Target Audience
- SOS provides this service to all customers with a support contract.
- Scope
- Product Maintenance provides customers with releases after the General Availability date up to the end of the Maintenance Period.
- The General Availability release is usually the first release with a given major or minor version number, i.e. version 1.7.0 which replaces version 1.6.x.
- Ongoing bug-fix releases for major / minor versions are counted as 1.7.1, 1.7.2, 1.7.3 etc.. From version 1.7.0 onwards, and in contrast with practice up to and including version 1.6.x, bug-fix releases will not contain improvements or new features but will be restricted to bug-fixes, ensuring compatibility of the release to its predecessor as closely as possible.
- Should a critical error be detected in a release during its Maintenance Period then SOS would fix that bug in a way that does not require complete testing of the release. Testing could be reduced to the bug-fix, instead of a full test of the scheduling environment. In such cases SOS would apply the bug-fix to the latest minor version of that release, e.g. 1.7.3.
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