The Global Language of Business

3.4 Conformance language in GS1 standards

The concept of “conformance” is central to GS1 standards. A GS1 standard exists to define certain characteristics of an implementation created by an end user or solution provider. An implementation is said to conform to a GS1 standard if it satisfies the conformance conditions laid out in the text of the standard. The standard is written such that when multiple implementations are in conformance to the standard, those implementations are capable of interoperating in the way envisioned by the authors of the standard.

3.3 Issuing and dating technical documents

All GS1’s technical documents have a release number and this will appear on the title page. The release number has the structure N.N or N.N.N and the guidance for usage is.

The first number indicates a MAJOR release. 1 is the first release, while 2 indicates a new release that is incompatible with release 1.

The second digit is used for a MINOR release. This indicates backward-compatible additions or small changes to the wording or structure