Versioning

[JoshData]

Hey folks. HHS is trying to implement code according to the specification. But the specification is changing. (E.g. c9aefbe) This poses some obvious problems when trying to consume arbitrary data.json files.

A few things would make this easier:

• Applying version numbers to schema changes.
• Including a version number within the data.json file so consumers know what version the file conforms to.
• Having a changelog so we know what's changed in the schema.
• Batching changes so that we don't have as many schemas in the wild as data catalogs.

[MarinaNitze]

Josh: totally agree. We'll be implementing a changelog and are trying to be careful to batch any metadata schema changes into one upcoming batch.

[MarinaNitze]

There is now a metadata-changelog.md on Project Open Data. (Today it is a draft, pending final approval of the 1.0 Final Schema). Once the final blessings are given to the Final 1.0 Schema, this first schema will be final for the foreseeable future.

We all really appreciate everyone's patience as we navigated this whole new way of accepting and incorporating public feedback, and when there is inevitably a 1.1 schema, hopefully that process will be smoother.

Current thought is to include an entry in your data.json file for the data.json file (meta!), with the version number in the description field. I am going to open a new issue to make that clearer, and close this one.