Hello,
I would find it helpful, if novell-release included the update level as well instead of only the SP level
this would help identify quickly if the current updates are installed
if you use nu.novell.com or a Micro Focus SMT server as a repo, you can find this info using
zypper se|grep oes2018
if you are using a yum repo from ZCM however, you have no way of finding that information
tklimt-zka-branch01:~ # cat /etc/novell-release
Open Enterprise Server 2018 (x86_64)
VERSION = 2018.3
PATCHLEVEL = 3
UPDATELEVEL = Update 4.1 OES 2018 SP3 HF