API Forward / Backward compatibility

Target release	Mercury
Epic
Document status	DRAFT
Document owner	Medha Parlikar (Unlicensed)
Designer
Developers
QA

Goals

Ensure that the RChain API's are backwards and forwards compatible. Applications that use the RChain public API's should not break in the event of a system upgrade.
The API should be fast.

Background and strategic fit

JSON-RPC is notoriously poor at supporting updates to the API it implements. We do not want our clients to become tightly coupled to a specific version of our API's.

Supporting documentation:

https://codeclimate.com/blog/choose-protocol-buffers/w

Assumptions

Client applications will use our Node API. We don't want for them to have to re-visit their implementation when the API changes over time.

Requirements

#	Title	User Story	Importance	Notes
1	Client Application	As a client application calling the RChain API, I require that my api calls always work so that my application's functionality does not change out from under me.	Must Have
2

User interaction and design

Questions

Below is a list of questions to be addressed as a result of this requirements document:

Question	Outcome

RChain wiki