Update Indicator

The NewReleaseMessage in ERN-3 contains the UpdateIndicator field.

The NewReleaseMessage in ERN 3 contains a field UpdateIndicator. This field has been deprecated and users are strongly discouraged from using it. The field has been removed from ERN 4. 

The only purpose for such an UpdateIndicator field was to indicate to the recipient that it had already received and ingested a message containing mostly the same data elements and that the current message provides an update to the older message.

This assumes, therefore, that:

• The sender knows that it has already sent a message about the same Release;

• The recipient has received this message;

• The recipient has ingested this message (the original message may still be in an ingestion queue when an urgent update is sent); and

• The recipient still has the Release in its database when the update message arrives.

A recipient only gains any benefit from an UpdateIndicator if all of these conditions are met. A prudent recipient of a NewReleaseMessage with the UpdateIndicator set to True would still need to check whether the release data communicated in that NewReleaseMessage is already in the recipient’s database, which makes the UpdateIndicator redundant.