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BDC release states: deprecated data products and what to do

New in SAP BDC (October 2026): Active, Deprecated and Decommissioned states for data products and intelligent content, plus view release states in the catalog.

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On 20 October 2026, SAP Business Data Cloud started showing the release state of data products, data packages and intelligent content: Active, Deprecated or Decommissioned. On the same day, with SAP Datasphere wave 2026.22, the catalog also started showing the release state of Datasphere views. It looks like a small UI change, but behind it there is a lifecycle with deadlines that you want to understand before a data product your reports depend on stops loading data.

The three BDC states

According to the BDC documentation, every data product and every piece of intelligent content is in one of these three states:

State What it means What it implies
Active Stable and production ready It can move to Deprecated at any time. Major versions remain supported for a transition period before they enter deprecation
Deprecated Still works, but is scheduled for removal This usually happens once a successor exists, and you must replace it with that successor. It lasts at least 12 months, with continued support (patches and, rarely, minor updates)
Decommissioned No longer works; kept only for historical reference SAP stops supporting it

SAP also sets a minimum: the total lifetime of a resource, from Active until it is decommissioned and removed from the system, must be at least 24 months.

Two details matter in real projects:

  • A data product’s state is independent of its data package’s state. If a data package is decommissioned, you can keep using its data products that are still Active.
  • The cockpit still lets you activate Deprecated or Decommissioned data products, although SAP advises against it because they might not work as expected.

What happens when something is decommissioned

This is the part I find most sensitive. Once a resource is Decommissioned:

  • In the cockpit, uninstalled intelligent content and inactive data packages disappear from the Available tab under Intelligent Content and Data Packages, and inactive data products no longer appear in their data packages. Anything you have already installed or activated stays visible, with a Decommissioned label.
  • In SAP Datasphere, the data product no longer receives updates, data loads are stopped, and it is shown as Inactive.
  • SAP Datasphere and SAP Analytics Cloud artifacts remain operational, because downstream consumers (connected systems, dashboards, data pipelines) may depend on them. To remove them, you uninstall the intelligent content and deactivate the data products from the cockpit.

Datasphere views have their own lifecycle

View release states are not new: they have existed since wave 2024.18 (August 2024). What is new in 2026.22 is that the catalog shows the release state of each view and lets you filter by it. On the asset details page it appears in the statuses section, next to the functional and publication statuses.

This is how they work:

  • Not Released is the default. It is optional: nobody forces you to release any view.
  • Released: you guarantee the view will keep returning data consistently for at least two years. From then on it only accepts changes that don’t break its consumers: adding columns, adding associations, or adding an input parameter with a default value (if the view already has at least one). You can’t remove columns, parameters or associations, and whatever you save becomes part of the released view.
  • Deprecated: you must pick a successor view. Once saved, the successor can’t be changed; to choose another one you have to revert to Released and deprecate the view again.
  • Decommissioned: only once the view has been deprecated for one year and at least two years after it was released. After that, you can delete it at any time.

When you set a view to Released, the editor warns you that the change can’t be reverted, although users with the Spaces.Update permission (included in the DW Space Administrator role) can go back to the previous state. And in transports, the Transport app won’t import objects whose release state is inconsistent with the object already in the space.

The timelines are very close to SAP’s own: at least one year in deprecation and two years of life. With the new catalog display, you can apply to your views the same discipline SAP applies to its data products.

How I would use it in a project

My checklist after this change:

  1. Check the cockpit. Look in Intelligent Content and Data Packages for installed resources labelled Deprecated or Decommissioned.
  2. For every Deprecated item, open a migration task with a date. You have at least 12 months, but adapting views, models and stories to a successor takes time.
  3. Measure the impact before touching anything. Each asset’s details page in the catalog has an impact and lineage diagram, and the impact side shows the objects that use the asset as a source. It is a good starting point to find out which of your views and models depend on a data product.
  4. Release your consumption views. In my opinion, it is worth setting the views that SAP Analytics Cloud or other spaces consume to Released. The editor then limits changes and warns you if you try one that would break their consumers.
  5. Deprecate with a successor and communicate. When you replace a view, deprecate it pointing to the new one and tell its consumers.

Questions I would ask SAP

  • Apart from the label in the cockpit, how are customers told that a data product has moved to Deprecated? Is there a notification or an API to monitor it?
  • Where is the successor of a deprecated data product shown? I haven’t found it documented.

Conclusion

Release states make the lifecycle of SAP content visible, with deadlines: at least 12 months in Deprecated and at least 24 months of total lifetime. Treat Deprecated as the start of a migration and don’t wait for Decommissioned, when data stops loading without any error. And use the moment to release your Datasphere consumption views and manage them the same way.

Sources

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