Naming conventions

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A naming convention is used to differentiate the various versions of a project as it moves through the lifecycle of updating, deploying, co-deploying, undeploying, and archiving.

Acronyms can contain these characters: capital letters (A-Z), numbers (0-9), and underscore (_). Snapshot acronyms can also contain a period (.).

The project acronym is created when the project is created. You must specify an acronym that is unique across your environments.

The branch acronym is automatically generated using the same guidelines as the snapshot acronym although it doesn't include periods. For example, a new branch created with the name My New Branch would result in an acronym value of MNB. The default branch name and acronym are Main. The name and acronym must be unique within the project.

Snapshot acronyms are generated by using the first seven characters of the snapshot name that fall into these types, if there is no conflict:
  • capital letters (A-Z), numbers (0-9), a period (.)
  • lowercase characters that follow whitespace or an underscore (_), converted to uppercase
If there is a conflict, meaning a duplicated acronym, after following these rules, characters are removed from the end and replaced with a counter until the conflict is resolved. The remaining characters are followed by and underscore and a counter. For example if you have MYSNAPSHOT1 through MYSNAPSHOT100, when MYSNAPSHOT101 is created the acronym might look like MYS_101.
Note: Snapshot names and acronyms must be unique across all branches of a project. Acronym conflicts can cause trouble when you move snapshots between IBM® Workflow Centers or when you delete snapshots that are still in use on IBM Workflow Server because names might be reused.
To have a truly unique snapshot acronym, consider these tips:
  • Enforce a consistent format across your organization that guarantees seven or fewer characters are used for each snapshot acronym.
  • Use a date-based snapshot-naming convention like MMDDYY, MM-DD-YY, OR YY-MM-DD. Avoid any convention that uses periods and eight digits like MMDDYYYY.
  • Use a version format to prefix the application, which takes care not to exceed seven total characters and can include periods, numbers, and uppercase letters.
  • Have a description or application acronym appended as a suffix so it doesn't impact the acronym, for example
    • 072920A_MyApp
    • 07-29-20B_GA
    • 07_29_20C_HSS
Here are some good examples that follow these tips:
  • 03-26-15A_MyApp
  • 03-26-15B_MyApp
  • 23.154_MyApp
Here are some bad examples that would cause a conflict because the first seven characters used for the acronym are the same:
  • 10.13.15_My App and 10.13.19_MyApp
  • MYAPPNAMEv3.4.16 and MYAPPNAMEv3.4.17
Note: When using the mediation flow component version-aware routing function, name your snapshot so that it conforms to the <version>.<release>.<modification> scheme (for example, 1.0.0). Because the snapshot acronym is limited to seven characters, the digit values are limited to a maximum of five total digits (five digits plus two periods). Therefore, care should be taken when the digit fields are incremented, because anything beyond the first seven characters is truncated.

For example, a snapshot name 11.22.33 results in a 11.22.3 snapshot acronym.