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Sunsetting older DDEX standards

Some versions of DDEX standards are over 10 years old and have over time been superseded by newer versions with greater functionality and/or with simplified structures.

On 24th February 2023, DDEX announced that the following standards will be “sun-set” from 2025 onwards:

  • All versions of the XML variant of the Digital Sales Reporting Message Suite standard (DSR);

  • All versions of the Electronic Release Notification Message Suite standard (ERN) that have the main version number of 3 and the version 4.0 of that standard; and

  • All profiles for the above ERN standards, which are:

    • Version 2.0 and earlier of the Release Profiles for Common Release Types; and

    • Version 1.4 and earlier of the Business Profiles for Common Deal Types.

The DSR XML Version has been unsupported for a number of years. This means that there have been no updates, bug fixes or AVS additions made to this standard during this time, and this will remain the case going forward. Therefore, from 1st March 2025 all XML versions of the DSR standard, including the text, the XML schemas and all articles or implementation advice about it will be removed from all DDEX websites.

For all the versions of the ERN standard with the main version number 3 and its profiles, and version 4.0 of the ERN standard and its profiles, there is a longer lead time before the process concludes.

So, firstly, from 1st March 2025, all the versions 3 and the version 4.0 of the ERN standard and their respective profiles will no longer be supported. This means that from that date no further updates, bug fixes or AVS additions will be made to these versions of the standard. Secondly, from 1st March 2026 these standards, including the texts, the XML schemas, Schematron rules, and all articles or implementation advice about them will be removed from all DDEX websites.

After 1st March 2025 and 1st March 2026 respectively, copies of the texts of these versions of the DSR and ERN standards and, where relevant, the XML Schema, samples and Schematron rules will only be available on application to the DDEX Secretariat.