I have to mostly agree with Hawkins on this - these projects should not be tied to each other's release schedules, even from the beginning. However, the reality is treating Teiid 6.0.0 as "released" is a misnomer until Designer 6.0.0 is released (which we should be very close to doing). Teiid is pretty much useless without at least *some* version of Designer being available. We want to change that fact in the future, but that's how things sit today. In other words, for all practical purposes - and for this very first release only - we need to treat the Teiid solution as a whole - both Teiid Server and Designer - as *unreleased* until Designer is released. Once Designer is out there, it shouldn't matter how often either project releases. Certainly the Designer release schedule in particular will remain important to the user for the short term, since Designer is, for now, the only way to produce the metadata and transformations that the server consumes. Another way of putting this is, for the near term, Teiid releases will be irrelevant to customers until a supporting version of Designer is released or unless they don't depend upon tooling in the first place. I definitely believe that while the server relies on the Designer as its sole source of input, the project needs to be diligent in documenting in its release notes what features are available and accessible, either due to their support by Designer or their independence from tooling, and those that are "available" but not accessible until a supporting version of Designer is released. If we don't do this, we'll just be creating our FUD within our own community.

Regarding the connector testing issues John originally referred to, if there really is a Designer dependency, then that connector should probably should even be advertised as available until a supporting version of the Designer is available. My disclaimer is I don't really understand the particular issue with the connector, so I might be way off here...