Versioning Strategy for XML BMS Publications

The following versioning strategy is for GS1 BMS (XML) Standards and development documentation only. It does not apply to the other GS1 standards such as EANCOM, AIDC, etc. These other standards are governed by a wholly separate set of governance and are not addressed here.

The Versioning Strategy encompasses the use of three numbers to denote a change or update to the standards. This is outlined below:

• N — used for major changes to the Architecture and Core Components. No backward compatibility between standards publications.
• N.n — used for publication updates; there is backward compatibility.
• N.n.n — used for minor changes: errata, navigation, document updates, new guidelines, etc. There is backward compatibility.

For example, if the Item BMS 1.3.0 required a change to the common library that affected all messages, the new version would be renamed Item BMS 2.0.0.