Products in Technopedia without Version or Release Information
Products in Technopedia without Version or Release Information
Synopsis
Why some Technopedia Products do not have Version or Release Information?
Discussion
At any point in time, you can expect to find a Software Product in Technopedia without an associated version or release. For example, when you access Technopedia on your Publish DB, it is possible for a CAT_SW_PRODUCT_ID to exist with no CAT_SW_VERSION_ID or CAT_SW_RELEASE_ID associated with it. The reasons for this are:
Lack of reliable information ? Extensive research did not yield any reliable source or reference that can be used to validate the existing of any version or release.
In progress ? The product is in the process of being added into Technopedia. Therefore, the information on associated versions and/or releases will be added at a later time.
Low priority items ? The product was added into Technopedia as part of exercises to capture the existence of the product only. The version and/or release information is low priority (e.g. no customer is asking for it, product is from a Tier 3 or Inactive vendor, etc.). So it was not added right away. Note that the priority is pushed up automatically as soon as Flexera receives a request from the customer to add the versions and/or releases.
In relation with Normalize Gap-fill, the ultimate goal is to map the discovered data to the release level. When Technopedia does not have the version and/or release exist, research is done to collect and add it into Technopedia to accommodate the mapping. However, there are occasions where extensive research did not yield any reliable reference to the version, even after the attempt to contact the vendor directly and/or collaborate with the customer to provide supporting documents. When this occurs, Gap-fill can only be done to the Product level (no version and/or release information can be provided).
It would be helpful if an indicator was available so we know if gap fill at the product or market version or minor version only is available for the product, so we don't bother you with these requests for backfill.
@ajwaterston - that's a good opportunity to point you to Flexera Ideas, where ideas of product improvements can be logged and discussed. Select the Product > Ideas menu option in the community to go to that site.
