ARDC Services: Maintenance Windows and Product Versions
Dear all,
ARDC is committed to stable, reliable services to support leading edge research. In support of this, we will introduce the following changes to the way we manage our products or services starting next week, 4 April 2023:
- The implementation of a service or product changes/updates will be scheduled during the Maintenance Windows (see schedule below)
- Versions will be individually assigned for in scope products or services (see current product versions below)
What is a Maintenance Window?
A Maintenance Window is a regular recurring event during which planned outages and changes are agreed to occur. It provides stakeholders with predictable period s of possible disruption to the systems and services they use. It is a time period defined to run manual and/or automated maintenance activities in order to maintain the health of or implement enhancements to our systems and services.
ARDC Online Services Maintenance Windows
RDA, RVA, Handle Service, Data Retention Validation Service, Jira Service Desk and Technical Documentation Portal
- Weekly maintenance: Tuesdays, 2-5pm AEST (or AEDT during daylight saving)
- Annual maintenance: Second Monday of January, 1-5pm AEDT
Research Activity Identifier (RAiD)
- RAiD follows a different schedule and its Maintenance window is documented here.
How do we communicate maintenance?
Regular maintenance windows:
The Maintenance Window is available on the ARDC Technical Documentation page. Product contacts (ie. Data Source Administrators, RVA publishers, Handle contacts, etc) will no longer receive email announcements.
The ARDC status page (https://statuspage.ardc.edu.au/) will be updated with the scheduled maintenance. Everyone is encouraged to subscribe to this page to receive regular updates on planned (and unplanned) maintenance.
- Pop up banners will be available on the affected services (e.g. RDA Registry, RDA Portal, RVA portal, etc.) as necessary during the maintenance period.
- A changelog will have the list of changes implemented under each version for the affected product/service.
Other types of maintenance:
For other required maintenance that do not fall under the regular maintenance windows and that would require downtime (e.g. urgent implementation of a security patch), the ARDC status page (https://statuspage.ardc.edu.au/) will be updated.
It is highly recommended that you subscribe to our Status Page to get notifications about our product announcements and maintenance.
What is Product Versioning?
Product or service versioning refers to the different versions of the products and/or services that ARDC releases. Versioning is important because it helps both the users and the implementors track the different versions implemented and released by ARDC. It also helps to track and identify the changes that have been implemented since the last release. And because some of the ARDC products are available as open source products, versions will be useful in assessing issues and bugs reported by users and/or implementors.
Version number
Product or service versioning will follow the SemVer versioning format: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH (eg. version 1.0.0)
Description | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| MAJOR | A major version | Release of a new look and feel of RDA |
| MINOR | An addition (or deletion) of a feature or functionality Components may have its own version number | Addition of Theme pages in RDA |
| PATCH | A change to an existing feature or functionality, normally bug fixes | Change to the layout of Theme page homepage in RDA |
Optional versions:
Depending on the extent and complexity of a major release, the ARDC Implementation team may introduce an Alpha and/or Beta release, generally for testing, prior to the actual release.
- Alpha version
- This is the version of the product or service that is used by the internal team for testing.
- Bugs and feature issues are expected to be identified during the Alpha version.
- Major issues are otherwise resolved before it can be moved to the Beta version.
- Beta version:
- May be made available primarily for nominated users to test the functionality of the product/service prior to its general availability.
- It can also be used for demonstrations purposes.
- When major issues have been fixed and all functionalities are tested to be working, the Beta version can also be used by the Beta testers to accept the product for production release.
- Any bugs identified after the beta testing are considered acceptable and do not affect the overall functionality of the product or service.
Current ARDC Online Services Versions
RDA, RVA, Handle, DVRS, Linked Data IRI
The products or services and their major components listed below have been assigned it's current version based on previous releases.
| Product Name | Component | Current Version | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research Data Australia (RDA) | RDA Registry and Portal | 3.0.0 | Research Data Australia Portal helps users find, access, and reuse data for research from over one hundred Australian research organisations, government agencies, and cultural institutions. The RDA Registry, the back end of RDA Portal, allows automatic (through the Harvester / Importer Service) and manual publication (using the RDA manual entry screens) of datasets and collections descriptions with rich metadata in Research Data Australia, enabling better discovery by the wider research community. |
| Harvester/Importer | 2.0.0 | The Harvester / Importer Service provides a service-oriented framework to support the processing and routing of content and metadata from a source Data Provider to a target application. | |
| Mycelium | 1.0.0 | This service utilises Neo4j graph database technology to index relationship data in Apache Solr, enabling various features such as RDA ConnectionsTree, RDA Graph Visualisation, and implicit relationship discovery, enriching RDA View and Search pages. | |
| Research Vocabularies Australia (RVA) | RVA Portal and Registry | 2.0.0 | Research Vocabularies Australia helps you find, access, and reuse vocabularies for research. The service comprises: a Portal and Registry for hosting, describing, discovering and accessing vocabularies; software for creating and editing vocabularies; a widget for embedding vocabularies within web pages; and various application programming interfaces enabling machine-to-machine access. |
| Handle Service | Handle Server | 1.1.0 | The Handle Service offers an automated solution for assigning universally unique, citable identifiers to resources such as datasets, collections, and papers, utilising Handle technology. |
| Data Retention Validation Service (DRVS) | | 1.2.1 | The Data Retention Validation Service allows the harvesting and validation of Datacite DOIs to a given standard for numerous project partners who are signed up for the ARDC Data Retention Project. The Registry is based on the ARDC Cerium module for ingesting XML versions associated with a given identifier. The dashboard allows for the DRVS project to monitor metadata quality for each project partner. |
| Linked Data IRI* | Registry | 1.0.0 | The AGLDWG Linked Data IRI Service is a service for allocating and managing persistent web addresses for certain kinds of Internet data resources by government organisations in Australia. ARDC operates this service on behalf of the Australian Government Linked Data Working Group. The Registry is the means by which service requests are created, approved, and managed. |
| Rewriter | 1.0.0 | The Rewriter is a URL rewriting service for the linked data resources managed by the service. |
Research Activity Identifier (RAiD)
The RAiD Service follows a basic "major.minor" version numbering scheme, where we don't expect to increment the "major" version for a very long time. Customer visible release numbering for the foreseeable future is expected to be of the form: 1.1 .. 1.999, etc.
| Product | Component | Current Version | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Research Activity Identifier (RAiD) Service | RAiD | 1.0 | A RAiD is a unique and persistent identifier (PID) for research projects. The RAiD service facilitates the minting of RAiDs for research activity and helps integrate the ARDC RAiD API into research platforms. It can be used to assign RAiDs to any research project or activity. |
Backwards incompatibilities in the API are handled on an endpoint-by-endpoint basis, with an 18-month deprecation window: https://github.com/au-research/raido/blob/main/doc/service-level-guide.md#api-compatibility
Past and Future releases are documented in the changelog.md file: https://github.com/au-research/raido/blob/main/changelog.md
Out of Scope:
The following services or products are not in scope of the product versioning:
Components embedded in the main product or service:
Third party products:
How will these changes impact the users
There are no actions required from users as a result of these changes. However, ARDC encourages everyone to subscribe to the ARDC status page (https://statuspage.ardc.edu.au/) to get notified of any scheduled (and unscheduled) maintenance in any of our services. Take note of the Maintenance Window and ensure that you schedule your activities accordingly.
Questions?
For any questions or feedback, please email services@ardc.edu.au.