Some of the software released by Application Support has a version number on it that looks like “12.05” or “12.08”. What does this version number mean?

This is the “release version” that we will be using to refer to complete sets of software. Instead of having to know the version of every executable inside, all you have to know is the CBS release version, and that tells you exactly what software is in use.

Why are we doing this?

With some of our software, it’s very difficult to tell what “version” you’re using. Spcwin has a version number like 5.36, but there are multiple different versions called “5.36”. You have to also know the modified date of the executable Spcwin.exe. And, there are other executables like POSiterm.exe which don’t have version numbers and instead only have modified dates.

This makes it very hard to tell what version of POSitouch you’re using. To know completely which version of POSitouch you’re using, you have to know:

• Spcwin’s version identifier (“5.36”)
• Spcwin.exe’s modified date (“6/26/12”)
• Positerm.exe’s modified date
• The modified date of the DAT files in C:SCDAT
• The modified date of all the backoffice files:
• Taw.exe
• Tarw.exe
• Inw.exe
• Psneww.exe
• Rdcdata.str
• etc…

This is too much to keep track of! Instead, CBS is collecting all of these different “version” numbers into a single version number which is four digits long, based on the release date. Any software with version number “12.08” was released in August of 2012. Software released in March of 2013 will have version number “13.03”.

Hopefully, in the future, we can stop looking at the myriad of different version numbers like “5.36.2” (POSitouch), “6/26/12” (POSitouch), “12.0.3 22367” (Paytronix), “11.0.17438” (Acronis), “1.0.3.38” (Order Entry), and instead have a simple, increasing version number for everything.