Composable Commerce compatibility and release lifecycle

Compatibility

commercetools Composable Commerce uses continuous delivery to deploy updates multiple times a day. This means we don't have fixed release cycles but instead release features as soon as they are ready. It also allows us to promptly correct any issues.

The Composable Commerce APIs are versionless, removing the need for version upgrades. However, individual fields or actions might be changed as part of the APIs' evolution. These changes will not break existing solutions but might require adjustments.

Implications

If the Customer sends additional undocumented fields, these can conflict with future new field names in Composable Commerce, causing runtime errors. Avoiding this is the responsibility of the Customer.

SSL/TLS lifetime

To keep connections to the API secure at all times, it is necessary to periodically renew SSL/TLS certificates and also replace them when adapting to newer security policies. We try to keep those modifications to a minimum. In general, we target a maximum of one certificate renewal per year. However, if security issues are found within any aspect of the encryption algorithms in use, we reserve the right to replace certificates more often.

Release life cycle

Early access

After being initially deployed, new features can go through a early access phase for evaluation by selected customers. This phase aims to collect feedback early in the development cycle to improve and refine the new feature. Participating in early access programs is a great way to experiment with new features and share your insights with the Product team. Please note that early access features should not be used in production, and they do not have publicly available documentation or release notes; instead, participants are notified of any changes directly.

commercetools may change or discontinue early access functionalities at any time. These features might be removed entirely on rare occasions. Regardless of whether these functionalities are free or paid, or used in test or production environments, commercetools does not offer support, service level commitments, or remedies for them.

Public beta

Some new Composable Commerce features are tagged as BETA in the documentation. This means that the APIs related to that feature can be subject to change or discontinuation:

• breaking changes are announced three months in advance
• removals are announced six months in advance

Announcements are made through release notes.

Public beta APIs are robust and secure implementations. They receive Customer Support and bug fixes like general availability features but are not covered by Service Level Agreements or remedies. Specific security measures can differ from the documented security measures.

General availability

Once a Composable Commerce feature is no longer tagged as BETA, it becomes generally available. The change in status is announced in release notes.

Deprecation

As commercetools Composable Commerce evolves, some features are superseded by better implementations and should not be used anymore. During deprecation, we encourage Customers to migrate to using the improved functionality. Existing implementations continue to work. Deprecations are announced in release notes.

Sometimes, we need to make big changes that might affect how things currently work. This doesn't happen often, but when it does, we'll let those affected know directly to work out how and when to switch to the new way. We try to avoid surprises, but we can't promise there will never be big changes.

Limits

To assure good performance for every project on commercetools Composable Commerce, the API imposes limits on certain parameters and objects. A detailed list of imposed limits can be found here.