Planned Solution for Version Mismatch Errors

[Logan Rhodehamel]

This is a preview warning for those of you using dataport. I want to give you a quick overview of how we are going to eliminate the version mismatch confusion.

Up to now, Dataport versions have coincided with AbleCommerce versions. For a 7.0.1 store, you need dataport 7.0.1. This version link is a problem in many respects. Naveed and I have worked together to choose a better path.

DataPort 7.3 is the last version of dataport that will be closely linked to the AbleCommerce version. Beginning with DataPort 7.4, the version of dataport will no longer relate to AbleCommerce. DataPort 7.4 will be compatible with ALL 7.x versions. Going forward, we will not increment DataPort version based on the AbleCommerce version.

Server installations will still require a version specific client API to be installed. An example of the files we might have available might look like this:

DataPort_7.4.125.zip
DataPort_ClientAPI_7.0.125.zip
DataPort_ClientAPI_7.1.125.zip
DataPort_ClientAPI_7.2.125.zip
DataPort_ClientAPI_7.3.125.zip

There will only be one version of the utility - so you do not need to have multiple instances installed to manage different store versions. The only requirement will be that the target stores have the latest ClientAPI installed. The DataPort will continue to warn about incompatible server API, but here we will make improvements as well.

In the end, we will largely eliminate the version mismatch problems. It will also allow us to bring dataport improvements to merchants using all versions of AbleCommerce 7.x without having to duplicate efforts for each released version.

Any comments or feedback are welcome.

[mfreeze]

This is great!

I currently have 3 different versions of the dataport installed. I can't wait until I can uninstall all 3 and use the same version for all stores. Hooray!

[Logan Rhodehamel]

I have done some initial testing with the new dataport - downloaded products from a 7.2 store and then imported to 7.3 store. It worked as expected from the universal version standpoint so this is encouraging. When you get the new 7.4 dataport, it can only be used with installations that have the latest dataport API. In other words, to use with older installs you have to update the bin\CommerceBuilder.DataClient.Api.DLL to the latest version. This is not much different than what happens with a new release for a version specific dataport.

[Logan Rhodehamel]

This solution was implemented and a new release of dataport is included in an announcement topic.