forward compatibility

Article summary

Forward compatibility or upward compatibility is a design characteristic that allows a system to accept input intended for a later version of itself. The concept can be applied to entire systems, electrical interfaces, telecommunication signals, data communication protocols, file formats, and programming languages. A standard supports forward compatibility if a product that complies with earlier versions can "gracefully" process input designed for later versions of the standard, ignoring new parts which it does not understand. The W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG) defines the concept more formally: "a change in the definition of a language is forward compatible if consumers of the original language can correctly process text written for the evolved version of the language". The objective for forward-compatible technology is for old devices to recognise when data has been generated for new devices. Forward compatibility for the older system usually means backward compatibility for the new system, i.e. the ability to process data from the old system; the new system usually has full compatibility with the older one, by being able to both process and generate data in the format of the older system. Forward compatibility is not the same as extensibility. A forward compatible design can process at least some of the data from a future version of itself.…

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