Release Process

In order to standardize processing across services, the Data Resource Center has defined the key steps in the release process.

  1. Initialization
  2. Processing
  3. Staging and Review
  4. Publication
  5. Completion

Step 1: Initialization

During this step, the Data Resource Center notifies all required services of a new release and the included studies. If any of the services do not accept the new release or are unhealthy in some other way, the release will not be allowed to continue and will be cancelled immediately. When all required services respond positively, the next step will commence. The Data Resource Center will also assign a tentative version id by incrementing the patch number of the last created release’s version (regardless of its publication status).

Step 2: Processing

After successfully verifying all required services are ready to accept the new release, the Data Resource Center sends a notification to all required services instructing them to begin the processing step. During this step, the services retrieve the latest data and manipulate it as necessary for distribution. Once each service has completed its work, it well report back to the Data Resource Center that it is done and wait for further instruction.

Step 3: Review

When all required services have completed the processing step and reported back successfully, the release will be said to be staged. During this time, the Data Resource Center may review the results of the processing for quality and may hold the release if necessary.

Step 4: Publication

Once the Data Resource Center has declared the release ready for publication, a member of the Data Resource Center wil publish the release. Doing so will send notifications to all the required services telling them to make public the data which they produced in the processing step. The Data Resource Center will update the version of this release by incrementing either the major or minor version depending on the classification of the release. During this step, required services should do minimal work needed to make the data public so as to publish as quickly as possible. All of the intense work should have been completed up front during the processing step. Each service will notify the Data Resource Center once it has completed publishing its data.

Step 5: Completion

When all required services have notified the Data Resource Center of successful publication, the release will be said to be published and available to end users.