New Error Code for Product Data Requests where the Data Holder does not hold the required Product Reference Data

[NeilSansomeMBL]

Description

Currently, there are four endpoints for Product Reference Data defined in the CDR Standards which Data Holders are obligated to support:

• For publicly offered Banking Products: GET Product & GET Product Details
• For Energy Plans (subject to Clause 4.2, Schedule 4 CDR Rules): GET Generic Plan and GET Generic Plan Detail.

However, there is no defined error response under the CDR Standards – Error Codes for scenarios where a Data Holder does not hold the Product Reference Data being requested. This includes scenarios such as:

• where a Data Holder is not required to disclose Product Reference Data for the product because the product is not publicly offered (e.g. a white label book in run-down), and
• where a Data Holder is not required to disclose Product Reference Data for a product because the Data Holder is in a separate industry (e.g. Banks being requested to provide Generic Plan information).

In these scenarios, a Data Holder may still be required to:

• build the appropriate parameter validation and error handling for each Product Reference Data endpoint, and
• present a ‘HTTP 200 success’ response with an empty payload in accordance with each endpoint’s response definition to convey to the requestor that there are no relevant products/data available.

Intention and Value of Change

It is unclear whether the above approach would achieve a better consumer outcome than an appropriately labelled ‘404 error’ response that similarly conveys to the requestor that there are no relevant products/data available, and it may be costly and complex to build (and maintain) the required error handling for each Product Reference Data endpoint without significant consumer benefit.

As a result, we propose to introduce the below new error response to:

• better inform the requestor that there are no relevant products available (and that Product Reference Data is not available because it is not required), and
• remove the need for Data Holders to maintain more costly and complex error handling for each Product Reference Data endpoint.

Area Affected

High Level Standards - Error Codes
Banking APIs - GET Products
Energy APIs - GET Generic Plans

Change Proposed

A new response is added to each Product Reference Data Endpoint:

Status	Meaning	Description
404	Not Found	Resource not required

With a new 404 (Not Found) Error Code added under the Consumer Data Standards, Error Codes, such as:

Error Title	Error Code	Description
Resource Not Required	urn:au-cds:error:cds-all:Resource/NotRequired	The requested resource URL is a valid API endpoint defined by the Consumer Data Standards, but it is not required to be supported as the Data Holder does not hold the required data.