Starting in the SmartPlant Foundation 2008 release, the Schema Editor and other SmartPlant integration components support forward and backward version compatibility. Integration supports the SmartPlant authoring tools' use of different versions of the SmartPlant schema from the version used in SmartPlant Foundation. Integrated SmartPlant tool versions 2007 Service Pack 4 and later can be integrated with SmartPlant Foundation 2008 and higher. Integration software automatically handles required transformations of data for tools. When the authoring tools release new versions, these will also be compatible with SmartPlant Foundation 2008 and higher.
When you are editing the schema using a CMF file, you can select the configurations you want to edit based on forward and backward compatibility. This allows you to add objects to one or more versions of the SmartPlant schema at the same time. However, if you publish new properties that are only available in a newer version of the SmartPlant schema to an older schema version supported by an older tool, the new properties that you add in the newer version of the schema will not be supported.
The Schema Editor, when working with application metadata adapters, relies on the
version supported information in the SPMapSoftware object. If the SPMapSoftware object
for a given application doesn't indicate support for the version of the schema being
used, then a message will be displayed to the user warning him about proceeding.