Over the last 25 years, Medical Connections Ltd has supported various versions of its three main components:

  • DicomObjects for COM
  • DicomObjects for .NET
  • DicomObjects for .NET Core
  • XdsObjects

For clarity and consistency, our release policy was updated in April 2018 to ensure that our customers can develop in confidence. From that date on, there are three product support categories:

  • Long term support
  • On-going development
  • Experimental (Private versions)

Each version produced will clearly state its support category in the DLL/OCX metadata.

Long-term support

These versions will be supported and stable for at least 5 years from release and will not undergo any changes to the API or intended functionality. The only permitted changes will be:

  • Bug fixes – to bring functionality into line with the documented intention
  • Compatibility fixes – to assist in interoperation with badly written peers, without affecting normal operation
  • Updates to the DICOM data element dictionary and, if necessary, the allowed value representations.

It is possible that there may be more than one long-term version available at any time as new releases may be made incorporating additions from the development work, and which case an explicit version/date will be indicated.

Ongoing development

There will normally only be one current and supported development version, which will be subject to the same updates as the Long-term supported version as above but will also have enhancements as requested by users or on our own initiative. Where possible, this will be achieved without changes to the API, but on the rare occasions that changes are necessary, they will show up as errors at compile time, allowing easy identification, rather than as behavioural changes at run time.

The On-going development versions are subject to full Quality Assurance and are suitable for use in released products.

Experimental

Experimental versions are normally delivered directly to customers with whom we are working to deliver new functionality and are not “published”. The developments within them will, once stable, be copied into the development branch, and eventually into a long-term version.

Experimental versions should not be used in delivered products.