In a recent discussion, the issue of breaking changes in SQL Server 2012 came up, and I realized that no one in the room had a thorough knowledge of the breaking changes and discontinued features. Since we were trying to determine a problem was a bug or a discontinued feature, this was important.
That made me realize that I had not seen all of this information gathered into a single location, so I decided to get all of that information and post it here. The information on SQL Server 2012 will change through Release Candidates and RTM, so I will update this article with those links as that information becomes available.
There are 4 categories of information listed below:
- Deprecated features – these are features that are scheduled to be removed in a future release of SQL Server, but that are still in the product.
- Discontinued functionality – this is functionality that worked in a previous version, but will no longer work with the version listed.
- Breaking changes – these are changes to the behavior of SQL Server that may break your code when you upgrade from a previous version. For example, if a function required additional parameters, this would be a breaking change.
- Behavior changes – behavior changes are changes that affect how features work or interact with SQL Server. Optional parameters or changes in type conversions could be behavior changes.
David P. Smith 