Version Scheme is a special feature to support the OpenAI toolkit and integration due to the issue of recognising version numbers at the end of the API URL rather than the version name. The standard version scheme called "URL Suffix", usually puts the major version number at the end of the URL used to access the API. However, this is an issue with OpenAI toolkit integration which expects some sort of name for the any version scheme. And as a result, URL suffixes with a version number did not resolve correctly.
Introducing the version scheme detail when publishing as API, resolves this conflict between the standard version scheme "URL Suffix" format and that expected by OpenAPI. This means when you publish a new version of an API, all you see at the end of the URL is the friendly name you have given to the version scheme and not a number as would have been the case with a standard version scheme implementation. This allows you to have more than one major versions of an API available and working concurrently.
For example, you can have more than one major version of an API by simply creating another API with the same codename but different major version (with the Major version number set to 2).
Here are things to remember when using the version scheme feature:
- You can add a new API with a similar codename to an existing API and a Major version number, you can set the version scheme option to "None". This is to help differentiate the two API versions.
- An API with a single Major version and a unique Codename can have the "None" version scheme option selected.
- An API with more than one version must have the URL Suffix version scheme option selected to enable that setting. This is to prevent any confusion of which API major version is being used.
- You cannot add a new API to a workspace with the same Codename and Major version number. If you do so, it will be rejected.