Breaking change
A change that prevents previously supported consumers or uses from working as agreed.
An existing promise changes incompatibly
A breaking change alters a supported contract so that existing consumers must adapt or lose agreed behaviour. It can affect data format, required inputs or the meaning of a result.
In a fictional example, a job API removes the previously promised orderId field. A report relying on it can no longer identify the job. An internal rename without effects on the public contract would not be such a break. Check affected consumers, the transition path and communication before release. A new version number alone does not adapt a consumer. Even an unchanged response format can contain an incompatible change in business behaviour.
Sources
Related terms
- Semantic versioningAn agreed version scheme expressing intended compatibility of changes to a defined public API.
- Backward compatibilityA new version continues supporting agreed existing usage without requiring changes to existing consumers.
- Contract testA test of agreed messages between a consumer and a provider at an application interface.
- Cache stampedeA cache stampede occurs when concurrent cache misses trigger the same expensive calculation or data query repeatedly.
- BackpressureBackpressure adjusts incoming data to the receiver’s processing capacity through signals to slow down or pause.
- Race conditionA result depends on the timing of overlapping accesses and can therefore be wrong.
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