Backward Compatibility

Overview

This page explains the difference between backward compatible and backward incompatible distributions in Bloomreach Cloud. It also describes which deployment strategies you can use for each type.

Deployment Strategies and Compatibility

Bloomreach Cloud supports two deployment strategies:

• Rolling updates
• Blue-green deployment

You can use rolling updates only when your implementation project distributions are backward compatible. Blue-green deployment supports both backward compatible and backward incompatible distributions.

Definition of Backward Compatibility

In Bloomreach Cloud deployments, a distribution is considered backward compatible if you can deploy it to an existing environment without updating the repository instance already running in that environment.

Compatibility in Bloomreach Experience Manager Product Releases

Distributions may include upgrades to newer Bloomreach Experience Manager versions. Bloomreach Experience Manager uses semantic versioning:

• Major releases (for example, 13.0.0) may introduce backward incompatible changes. These changes can break compatibility with previous major versions.
• Minor and maintenance releases (for example, 12.4.0) are guaranteed to be backward compatible with all previous releases within the same major version (such as 12.3.x, 12.2.x, 12.1.x, 12.0.x).

Compatibility in Implementation Projects

Your Bloomreach Experience Manager implementation project can introduce backward incompatible changes, especially in document types.

For document types, see Update Document Templates for detailed guidance. In summary:

• Backward compatible changes:
  • Adding a new document type
  • Adding a new non-required field to an existing document type
• Backward incompatible changes:
  • Any other modification to document types

If your project defines custom features that store data in the content repository, apply the same principle to any custom JCR namespaces. For more information, see Namespace Migration:

• Backward compatible namespace changes: Changes that do not affect existing nodes using the namespace's node type definitions.
• Backward incompatible namespace changes: Changes that may cause issues with existing nodes.

Summary

• Use rolling updates only with backward compatible distributions.
• Use blue-green deployment if your distribution includes backward incompatible changes.
• Major product upgrades may introduce backward incompatibility. Minor and maintenance upgrades are backward compatible within the same major version.
• Only specific changes to document types and namespaces are backward compatible. Review your changes before selecting a deployment strategy.