Several document class properties are important to document versioning. Each document version is either a major version or a minor version and is automatically assigned a major number and a minor number.
Content Platform Engine maintains the following read-only properties related to versioning:
A major version is one that
Released major versions are typically designed to be available to a wide range of users. Access to superseded major versions is typically more restricted, such as to a select group of authors and reviewers.
Major versions always have a minor number equal to 0. For example, a document with a major version number of 2 and a minor version number of 0, sometimes displayed together with the major number first, as in 2.0, is a major version.
If two-level versioning is used, the major number holds the current major version level of this document version series.
If single level versioning is used, all versions of the version series are major versions. The only exception is that reservations are always given a minor number, which in single-level versioning is therefore always 1. As soon as the reservation is checked in, the minor number goes back to 0 while the major number is incremented by 1.
A minor version is one that has not been approved and released as a major version. The most recently checked in minor version is marked in process. There can be only one in process version in a version series. Older minor versions are marked superseded, and there can be many superseded versions. Access to minor versions is typically restricted to a select group of authors and reviewers. A reservation document (the editable document version created by a check-out) is always a minor document.
A document is a minor version if its minor number is 1 or more (that is, not equal to 0). For example, a document numbered 2.1 has a major version number of 2 and a minor version number of 1 and is therefore a minor version.
If two-level versioning is used, the minor number holds the current minor version level of this document version series. Versions that are major versions (superseded or otherwise) have a minor number of 0. Versions that are minor have some number other than 0 for the minor number.
If single-level versioning is used, the minor number is always equal to 0, with the one exception of the reservation.
Content Platform Engine provides four versioning states that are automatically applied as a document version series goes through various defined stages. These states are released, in process, reservation, and superseded. Each of these states can be associated with a security template, providing easy control over the permissions granted on the document as it passes into a particular versioning state.
These version states are actually stored as integers and are sometimes displayed as integers by the administration console and client applications:
The text values ("Released" and so on) are associated with the integers by the Version Status Lookup Custom Object. You can edit this custom object to change the strings to some other value. You can, for example, change Released to Public version or In Process to In Progress.
For information about how security policies can be designed to automatically apply these changes of permissions to versions as they change from state to state, see Security policies.
The Current Version property defines which version in a version series is the most recent version, other than the reservation. (The reservation cannot be the current version.) The value of this property is used by events, folder references, and other server or client-based processes that act on the latest version.
Reserved is a property that is set on the current version when it is checked out. The term Reserved is meant to convey that the current version is no longer available to be checked out. Do not confuse with reservation. When the Reserved property of the current version is set to True, there must also be another version that is the reservation.