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Cloud APIs Deprecation and Retirement

Definitions

Deprecated: Deprecated features or services are scheduled to be retired in future.

Retired: Retirement is the end of the availability and support of feature or service. The feature/service is unavailable to customers as engineering investment has stopped. Customers may purchase extended support in some cases, at SLB discretion, to continue usage until the end of life.

End of life: All support and engineering investment stops when features/services reach end of life.

Extended Support Retired features or services are no longer supported. Customers may purchase paid programs for extended support to cover maintenance for as-is features/services (as available) until feature/service reaches end-of-life.

Deprecation policy:

The following table describes the deprecation process for APIs.

Stage

Action

Description

DeprecatedAnnouncement

SLB announces the end of support or deprecation for services, APIs, and endpoints through the Product updates link in Digital Help for the Developer Portal. Announcement lists the deprecated service or feature, deprecation start date, and recommended path of transition.

Deprecated tag

Deprecated APIs are tagged as "Deprecated" in the Developer Portal. Deprecated endpoints are marked with a strike-through (“example”) in the swagger documentation topics that are visible under the API Reference tab. 

Deprecation period

After the feature or service is marked as deprecated, it will be available for the following period to allow consumers to transition.
- For Beta: 3 months
- For Preview: 6 months
- For Stable: 6 months

In the following cases, SLB reserves the right to change the deprecation period without notice: 
- It is required by law or third-party relationship. After that, deprecated APIs and features are candidates for removal. 
- Doing so could create a security risk or a substantial economic or a material technical burden. Business model changes are considered an economic burden. 

RetiredExtended support

Retired APIs and endpoints are no longer supported. Customers may purchase paid programs for extended support to cover maintenance for as-is features or services, if available, until the feature or service reaches end-of-life.
Extended support is limited to provide operational support only that is limited to security updates.

End of lifeAccess discontinued

The feature or service is unavailable and has reached end-of-life.