[API - Breaking change] Geospatial North and South attributes renamed on Dataverse 6.2

[Juan Pablo Tosca]

Dear Dataverse Community,

We hope this message finds you well. As part of our ongoing commitment to improving the Dataverse platform, we have recently made a significant change to the API. While we always strive to maintain backward compatibility, there are instances where this becomes challenging due to the nature of the changes being introduced.

The Change: Paul Dante reported on 4645 that 2 fields were mislabeled as "north longitude" and "south longitude". We have fixed this on 6.1 replacing these fields with "north latitude" and "south latitude".

The Impact: Unfortunately, this update may break existing integrations and applications that rely on the previous API behavior. We understand that this can be disruptive, especially for those who have built custom solutions around the existing API endpoints

Our Commitment: Rest assured that providing backward compatibility is always a priority for our team. However, in this specific case, due to the critical nature of the fix, maintaining full backward compatibility may not be feasible. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding.

What You Need to Do:

1. Review Your Integrations: If you have any applications or services that interact with the Dataverse API, please review them to ensure they can accommodate the changes. Feel free to use our environment at beta.dataverse.org where you can test this change today. 

Best regards,

Juan Pablo Tosca | Dataverse Development Team.

[Juan Pablo Tosca]

Thanks to Jim Myers for letting me know that I made a mistake in the body of this email. Just to clarify, this change is releasing with 6.2 not 6.1.

Best regards,

Juan Pablo Tosca | Dataverse Development Team.