Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect — Question 129

Your company provides a recommendation engine for retail customers. You are providing retail customers with an API where they can submit a user ID and the
API returns a list of recommendations for that user. You are responsible for the API lifecycle and want to ensure stability for your customers in case the API makes backward-incompatible changes. You want to follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do?

Answer options

• A. Create a distribution list of all customers to inform them of an upcoming backward-incompatible change at least one month before replacing the old API with the new API.
• B. Create an automated process to generate API documentation, and update the public API documentation as part of the CI/CD process when deploying an update to the API.
• C. Use a versioning strategy for the APIs that increases the version number on every backward-incompatible change.
• D. Use a versioning strategy for the APIs that adds the suffix ג€DEPRECATEDג€ to the current API version number on every backward-incompatible change. Use the current version number for the new API.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The correct answer is C, as a versioning strategy that increments the version number with each backward-incompatible change allows clients to understand which version they are using and adapt accordingly. Option A is insufficient because simply notifying clients does not prevent issues caused by incompatible changes. Option B, while useful for documentation, does not address the versioning of the API itself. Option D may cause confusion for clients, as marking the current version as deprecated without a clear increment in versioning can lead to uncertainty about the API's stability.