Releases and Prerelease Software

• There are no maintenance updates, security vulnerability updates, or adhocs for CD releases. Instead, you should move to the next CD release, which has all the defect fixes and security updates included.

• We do not support in-place conversions from Caché or Ensemble to CD releases.   Instead, you move to the newest EM release. 

• Upgrade paths from CD releases are limited to:

  • the next CD release (for example, 2024.2→2024.3)

  • the next major EM release or a maintenance version of EM (2023.2→2024.1 or 2024.1.5, for example)

For more information, see https://community.intersystems.com/post/updates-our-release-cadenceOpens in a new tab on the Developer Community.

In addition to the fully supported releases, InterSystems provides prerelease software for developers who want an early look at new features. The purpose of the prerelease software is two-fold:

• It provides an early opportunity for customers to determine how the changes and enhancement in the release affect existing applications, to report issues found, and verify those issues have been resolved.

• It also provides early exposure of new features. Customers have a chance to try out the proposed ideas and give feedback on the usefulness of this feature for their business area.

InterSystems strongly encourages customers to plan on obtaining a preview release and to test their application against it.

Because the developer prerelease software can be updated frequently, the prerelease documentation may not fully cover the new features. Note that the prerelease documentation is updated daily, along with the rest of the recent documentation.

InterSystems software and cloud service releases may include one or more new capabilities that are in a pre-release state. Each of these capabilities is an experimental feature, which is included in generally available (GA) versions of our products, even though the feature itself is not in its final, GA version.

InterSystems encourages you to try experimental features that may be helpful for your organization. Based on user feedback, InterSystems can further improve each feature’s functionality, usability, and performance.

Experimental features are clearly noted in release notes and in the feature's own documentation. Typically, an experimental feature becomes generally available and fully supported after one or more releases.

Experimental features include the following limitations:

• InterSystems does not support experimental features in production environments. Further, support for experimental features is on a “best-effort” basis.

• Experimental features can change in substantive, incompatible ways prior to their release. (unlike released features, which are highly unlikely to change in incompatible ways). Also, InterSystems testing may not yet cover all possible usage scenarios and users may find themselves hitting issues in such untested scenarios.

  While the WRC works closely with other groups within InterSystems to relay feedback and collaborate on solutions, InterSystems may not be able to provide a full solution to problems as it does for regular platform features.

• InterSystems testing may not yet cover all possible usage scenarios, so feature use may uncover issues in untested scenarios.

• Documentation for experimental features may be limited, or available through an Early Access Program.

• The inclusion of an experimental feature does not ensure that it will eventually become generally available. In rare cases, InterSystems may remove an experimental feature.

When InterSystems creates new capabilities, it may make them available in unreleased software through an Early Access Program (EAP). Through an EAP, InterSystems works directly with customers to provide access to a new capability in unreleased software on a test basis. The software is typically focused on a specific new capability that is not yet ready for production use and for which InterSystems is collecting feedback. An EAP may address a full product, additional experimental code, a hosted service, and more.  Each EAP may have differing terms for eligibility, duration, and available support.

InterSystems may establish an EAP for a capability and make that capability available as an experimental feature .

For more information about current EAPs, see the Early Access ProgramsOpens in a new tab page on the InterSystems website.