Rhapsody product releases are numbered in the following format: <major>.<minor>.<service_pack>.<build_number>, for example Rhapsody 6.2.2.89234:

  • <major> - the first digit (before the decimal point) is the major version. A change in major version signals a considerable change in the function or the capability of Rhapsody. This could, for example, be a major change in the look and feel of the product, technical architecture changes or major features.
  • <minor> - the second digit (after the first or only decimal point) is the minor version number. A change in the minor version number signals targeted feature changes. These are generally refinements in existing or new features.
  • <service_pack> - the third digit indicates a service release. Changes included at this point are corrections to product defects that were present in the prior releases (with same first and second digits) that were sufficiently important to be corrected. This ensures that problems of significance are addressed outside of a functional product upgrade.
  • <build_number> - the build version.

Service Packs Upgrades (Product Updates)

Application of regular service packs (updating Rhapsody) is a significantly lower effort and risk relative to a product upgrade as the only changes between releases are bug fixes. This reduces the manual steps and testing load required to bring refinement in operation and stability to the install. Rhapsody as an organization has thoroughly tested these releases to ensure no unintentional behavioral changes in the product (for example, there are no feature changes between 6.0.0 and 6.0.1).

Updating Rhapsody ensures the highest-quality deployment of your engine, without requiring the investment of time required for a full upgrade.

Product Upgrades (Functional Product Change)

Upgrading to the latest version of Rhapsody means taking on new features (for example, upgrading from Rhapsody 5.5.9 to Rhapsody 6.3.0). In these cases, in addition to installing the software, there are likely to be extra steps to ensure the consistency of your engine’s functionality with the new feature set.

Full upgrades are a super-set of updates that bring many benefits, including an enhanced feature-set that enables new use cases and improved user experience, and renewed platform support (for example, upgraded JRE versions from Java 7 to Java 8).

For historical reasons, Rhapsody 6.2.x releases are minor releases that were released using the versioning nomenclature of service packs. Rhapsody versions 6.2.0, 6.2.1, 6.2.2 and 6.2.3 are full General Availability releases. Rhapsody 6.2.4 and 6.2.5 are service packs building upon Rhapsody 6.2.3.

Long-Term Support

Long-term support releases (LTS) are supported for a number of years. Service packs for LTS releases provide important improvements and bug fixes relating to performance, robustness, reliability and security.

Currently, the latest versions of Rhapsody 5 and Rhapsody 6 are LTS releases.

RLC Backward-Compatibility

RLCs are generally backward-compatible. However, RLCs saved by an engine versions Rhapsody 6.1 and later (locker-enabled versions) are not compatible with engine versions before Rhapsody 6.1 (pre-locker versions).