SAS Quality Knowledge Base for Contact Information 27

Deprecation Policy

Occasionally a SAS Quality Knowledge Base (QKB) definition is changed in a way that requires you to make adjustments to your jobs. For instance, a definition might be renamed, the length of the match code produced by a definition might be increased, or one of the input/output tokens for a definition might be renamed or removed. This section describes the process used to implement such changes.

Deprecation Process

Definitions that will be removed from the QKB are first deprecated to notify users that they need to change any jobs that use the definition. In some cases, the deprecation process is also used when definitions are updated. Without this deprecation process, changes to the QKB could cause data quality jobs to fail without warning after upgrading to a new release. Deprecation normally takes place in two phases. Each phase takes place in a new release of the QKB. SAS takes this phased approach to give users time to update their jobs between QKB releases.

Definitions can be deprecated for a variety of reasons including:

1. The definition is being removed from the QKB
2. The definition is being renamed
3. The output tokens of a parse or extraction definition have changed
4. The input tokens of a gender, standardization, or match definition that accepts parsed input have changed
5. The definition no longer accepts input tokens
6. The length of a match code has increased
7. The identity values of an identification definition have changed

Removing a Definition

First Phase

The definition is retained, but documented to be removed in a future release. Users are encouraged to stop using the definition.

Last Phase

The definition is removed.

Renaming a Definition

First Phase

A new definition with the new name is added to the QKB. The original definition is retained and documented to be removed in a future release. Users are encouraged to begin using the new definition.

Last Phase

The original definition is removed.

Updating a Definition

Many definitions are enhanced in ways that do not impact existing jobs. Sometimes, however, definitions are enhanced in ways that do impact existing jobs (see 3-7 above). In this case, an enhanced definition will temporarily be introduced into the QKB. This temporary definition is given the same name as the definition it will eventually replace, with a version tag appended to the name. The version tag represents the version in which the temporary definition is introduced. For example, a temporary definition for updating the Address parse definition might be named Address (v27). Definitions with a version tag are referred to as tagged definitions. Temporary definitions are always deprecated and will be removed in a future release. The original definition is deprecated to indicate that job impacting changes will be implemented in a future release.

First Phase

A tagged definition is added to the QKB. The tagged definition contains the updated processing that will eventually become part of the original definition. Jobs using the original definition will not fail. Users are encouraged to begin using the updated processing available in the tagged definition. Both definitions are deprecated.

Last Phase

The original definition is replaced with a copy of the tagged definition. The tagged definition is removed from the QKB.

• Jobs using the tagged definition must be changed back to the standard definition name.
• Jobs using the original definition must be modified to use the updated processing.