Telecommunication management; Backward and Forward Compatibility (BFC); Concept and definitions
The present document gives recommendations to develop future IRP specifications in a Backward Compatible (BC) way so that the group of IRPManager(s) and IRPAgent(s) are not forced to be upgraded in lock step.
The business case for supporting such group, as described above, is complex. It may not relate to the functions of the supported IRPs alone. Rather, it can relate to the cost of coordination of IRPVersion upgrades, the cost of maintaining an old IRPVersion and the cost of using single-vendor or multi-vendor IRPAgents. These considerations are operator deployment scenarios specific.
Clause 4 specifies the Recommendations and clause 5 describes the system context where the Recommendations are applicable.
Editor's Note: The “forward compatability” part is FFS.