New Autumn / Fall Update for Resolver CE coming w/c 20 September

[Nick Lansley]

Dear fellow GS1 Digital Link developers

Since we launched v2.4 of Resolver Community Edition in March 2021, a whole new set of updates and code improvements have taken place based on end-user feedback and new use cases.

The sparkling new v2.5 will have these features:

1. New Application Identifier 417 (Party Global Location Number - PGLN) has been added to the service. PGLNs are slightly different to standard GLNs because they identify an Organisation rather than just a location. Some smaller GS1 members don't have locations as they trade in online marketplaces, but they would like a Party GLN which gives buyers links to customer service and FAQ information which is neither product nor Location related.
2. Inclusion of Link Set standard - this creates a neat JSON-based variant of the links data included in the Link: header so it is easier to consume by apps.
3. GIAI (Global Individual Asset Identifier) entries are different to GTINs because the serial number is in the GIAI identifier itself, rather than in a qualifier. Think of GIAIs (assets) as all the 'things' an organisation owns. It the organisation is a hospital, for example, everything in that hospital is an asset, so has a GIAI asset number that uniquely identifies it. How many assets are in a hospital? Thousands? Millions?? Today, every single one of them would have to be uploaded to Resolver, but from v2.5 only one entry is required. In this case just the prefix allocated to that member by their GS1 Member Organisation is needed for the uploaded GIAI value, and the target URL includes a special template variable which gets replaced by the serial number when a request comes into Resolver with a GIAI starting with the same prefix. We are looking to extend this functionality to two other Identifiers where the serial number is part of the identifier - GRAIs (returnable assets such as a lending library) and SSCCs (Serial Shipping Container Codes). If we can, we'll include these two next week, otherwise we will perform a further minor update in a month's time.
4. New Dashboard service - find out stats about your data in Resolver! This new functionality includes a new Dashboard container which performs hourly updates to its statistical data store so as not to put pressure on the database when it is live.
5. Security audit updates to packages so that we minimise any security vulnerabilities in the third-party libraries we use for Resolver.
6. Various small bug fixes and performance improvements

Look out for the repo updating next week on GitHub!

Best regards

Nick Lansley

Lead Developer, GS1 Digital Link Resolver