Drupal module versioning and compatiblity. How to know what to use?

Question

Sorry if this is a really stupid question or if I should have been able to find it.

When it comes to module versions, how exactly does it work? Say for example the Openlayers module that has several other sub-modules, modules it integrates with, as well as modules/libraries it depends on.

Lets say open layers has the following available versions:

Reccomended: 7.x-2.0-beta5

Other Releases: 7.x-3.0-alpha0

Dev Releases: 7.x-3.x-dev 7.x-2.x-dev

Now it's time to install dependencies lets use "views module" for this case. Lets say it has these versions...

Recomended: 7.x-3.6

Other: 7.x-2.16

Dev 7.x-3.x-dev

So my question is do module updates/versions have any correlation on dependency modules? So in this situation if I install the Recommended : 7.x-2.0-beta5 of OPENLAYERS, am I suppose to install the Recommended : 7.x-3.6 of views or should I alternately install the version that has the 7.x-2.16 since both modules would then be in the same 2.x stage.

From what I've read patches are for minor releases like 7.x-2.{something) and only a major release would make a developer change to the next version 7.x-3.x. Also how does alpha, beta versions fit in with all this??? How is it that a alpha version of something is recomended over a non aplha or beta version?

The versions I've listed above are not real, but just an example. Hoverer, recently I do have issues with Openlayers and another module that required it. Both these modules had several stable versions and dev releases. Sine the sub-module is stable I'd assume it had a release that worked at one point in time with Openlayers. Is there a way to know this. Or is there a way to download using something like drush to chose dependency modules that are tested against openlayers version-whatever without problems.

Sorry for the long and horribly formatted question I hope someone can either answer or point me in the right direction to get some good documentation on this