Differences between obsolete,discontinued,deprecated in the documentation

Question

Hello,

 

In the Sql Server 2008 documentation, i have found 4 types of changes:

- discontinued : the use causes automatically an error ,it is the case of :

       - sp_addalias

       - sp_addgroup

       - registered servers APIs ( replaced by a new API )

       - sac.exe

- deprecated : no error when it is used ( but in the next or future version, it will be discontinued

       - DATABASEPROPERTY

       - sp_dboption

       - sp_attach_db

       - sqlmaint.exe

       - sys.database_principal_aliases

       - sp_configure options 'user instances enabled'  ( not clear the explanation )

       - for SMO : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc879341.aspx

- obsolete : i found in one place

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sqlserver.management.smo.registeredservers.aspx

 

why MS has used a really different term (obsolete) and what is its meaning ?

deprecated,discontinued....

 

I hope that somebody will be able to find an explanation as i have an application using registered servers with this smo.registeredservers namespace ( i have a solution with smoapplication.enumregisteredservers() but it is less evident )

 

Thanks beforehand

 

Have a nice day

 

 

Answer 1

Discontinued - no longer in this release of SQL Server.

 

Deprecated - in this release, but no longer being developed or supported. Will be discontinued in the next release or two.

 

Obsolete - a better alternative is available so this is now deemed redundant. Will probably be discontinued in the next release.

 

Answer 2

Hello gvee,

 

Many thanks.

For obsolete, it is amusing that this term is mainly used by the .Net Framework.

It seems that SMO is developped by people who are near to .Net Framework 

 

Have a nice day

 

Answer 3

The Smo.RegisteredServers topic is part of the managed reference doc set for that .NET Framework namespace. We use the same reflection-based tools to generate our mref docs as are used by the teams who build the .NET Framework SDK docs. When the developer marked the namespace as obsolete, that information is available to the writer and she could include it in the topic.

So the terminology in that topic is more aligned with reference material in the .NET Framework SDK because we're using the same authoring tools.

Answer 4

Hello Alan,

 

I have posted on the Sql Server Documentation Forum but i was thinking that SMO is so "special" that it would be logical i cannot have an answer.

Thanks for your clear answer which confirms what i was thinking : SMO is related to Sql Server but , in the same time, it is in a "different world".

Just a last question : is it the good forum to report a problem in the SMO documentation ? For example, an error ( for me ) as a function declared as Sub in VB ( void in VC# ) which should returned a datatable

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sqlserver.management.smo.smoapplication.sqlserverregistrations.refresh(SQL.90).aspx

 

Anyway, thank you very much and have a nice day

Answer 5

Hello,

 

I have discovered why the namespace Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.RegisteredServers is "obsolete".

It is because it is replaced by

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.sqlserver.management.registeredservers.aspx

this replacement is noticed in the new namespace not in the obsolete namespace.

A little omission....

 

Have a nice day

 

Answer 6

The best way to report feedback for anything in SQL Server Books Online is to use the feedback UI in the topics.

If you are looking at the topic in a local copy of Books Online, the feedback UI generates an email that goes to a mailbox monitored by our feedback processor. The processor looks up the topic owner, then creates a doc bug with your feedback and assigns it to the writer. If the process cannot determine an owner for some reason, it puts the bug in our team triage queue and we manually assign it to the owner.

If you are looking at the topic in either the MSDN or TechNet library, the feedback comment is stored in a database. Our writers periodically scan that database for comments on the topics they own.

Alternatively, you could also open a Connect item on a doc issue, just as you do with any other issue you find in SQL Server.