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How entity versioning works

The OnCommand Workflow Automation (WFA) entities, such as commands and workflows, are versioned. You can use the version numbers to easily manage changes to the WFA entities.

Each WFA entity includes a version number in the major.minor.revision format—for example, 1.1.20. You can include up to three digits in each part of the version number.

Before modifying the version number of a WFA entity, you must be aware of the following rules:

When you update the version of a WFA entity, the version of its immediate parent entity is updated automatically. For example, updating the version of the Create Volume command updates the Create an NFS Volume workflow, because the Create an NFS Volume workflow is an immediate parent entity of the Create Volume command. The automatic update to versions is applied as follows:

The following table lists the WFA entities and their immediate parent entities:

Entity Immediate parent entity
Cache query
  • Data source type
Template
  • Workflow
Function
  • Workflow
  • Template
Note: If a function contains special or mixed case characters, the version of its immediate parent entities might not be updated.
Dictionary
  • Template
  • Filter
  • Cache query
  • Command
  • Data source types which are using script method
Command
  • Workflow
Filter
  • Finder
  • Workflow
Finder
  • Workflow
Data source type None
Workflow None

You can search for an entity in WFA either using the parts of the version number or the complete version number.

If you delete a parent entity, the child entities are retained and their version is not updated for the deletion.

How versioning works when importing entities

If you import entities from versions earlier than Workflow Automation 2.2, the entities are versioned as 1.0.0, by default. If the imported entity is already present in the WFA server, the existing entity is overwritten with the imported entity.

The following are the potential changes to WFA entities during an import:

Note: You cannot selectively import entities from a .dar file.

If a later version of an entity is imported, the version of its immediate parent entities is updated.

If there are multiple child entities to the imported parent entity, only the highest degree of change (major, minor, or revision) to the child entities is applied to the parent entity. The following examples explain how this rule works:

Example of how the versions of imported child entities affect the parent's version

Consider the following workflow in WFA: "Create Volume and export using NFS - Custom" 1.0.0.

The existing commands included in the workflow are as follows:

The commands included in the .dar file, which is to be imported, are as follows:

When you import this .dar file, the minor version of the "Create Volume and export using NFS - Custom" workflow is incremented to 1.1.0.