Forward and Backward Compatibility
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Backward Compatibility
A system is said to be backward compatible is it is design to be compatible with older versions of itself.
If old clients encode data and send it to the current version of the system, a backward compatible system can process that data without error.
Forward Compatibility
A system is said to be forward compatible is it is design to be compatible with newer, future versions of itself.
If newer clients encode data and send it to an old version of the system and that system was designed to be forward compatible, then the system can process that data without error.