Semantic versioning scheme for Airlock Secure Access Hub components

A new versioning scheme is introduced for Airlock components in March 2020.

Affected components:

Airlock Gateway
Airlock Microgateway
Airlock IAM

About the new versioning scheme

The new versioning scheme is based on semantic versioning with specific definitions of breaking change:

Goals and motivation:
Same versioning scheme for all Airlock components.
The version number indicates the expected upgrade effort.
Prevent misunderstandings regarding STS releases.

The "LTS" label marks IAM releases as "long-term support" releases. WAF releases are implicit "LTS".
Please refer to https://techzone.ergon.ch/lifecycle for further information about the support life cycle.

Effects on upcoming releases

Upcoming Airlock Gateway releases are not affected.

The Airlock IAM releases in 2020 are versioned as follows:

Product	Old version	New version
Airlock IAM	7.2-pre1	7.2 STS
Airlock IAM	7.2 GA	7.3 LTS

Specific definitions of breaking changes

Semantic versioning requires a release to be major whenever it contains breaking changes. We adhere to the following definitions of breaking change.

A version is considered to be breaking and therefore a major release in the following cases:

Airlock Gateway	In case of invasive changes, potentially requiring manual configuration changes or re-testing of already integrated applications (e.g. major rule or parser changes, new regex engine, removal of deprecated features, etc.). Changes in the config REST API with expected high impact for customers. Non-backward-compatible changes in the control API. If a full re-installation is necessary (e.g. major OS update).

Airlock IAM	If upgrading requires manual changes for existing features in the following areas: Documented REST APIs Configuration (XML, instance.properties, environment variables) Customizing (HTML/JSP templates, SDK) DB schemas

Airlock Microgateway	In case of invasive changes, potentially requiring manual configuration changes or re-testing of already integrated applications (e.g. major rule or parser changes, new regex engine, removal of deprecated features, etc.). Non-backward-compatible changes in the control API.

Note that changes on non-published features or features marked as incubating are not considered breaking. These include IAM Loginapp SPA SDK, and IAM Java API for custom code (see Allow list document on Techzone).