Good morning!

As noted by another poster, v201206 deprecates several fields that come 
back through the management API when retrieving objects to work with 
(example: CampaignService). Those deprecated include:

   - avgCostForOfflineInteraction
   - conversionRate
   - conversionsManyPerClick
   - conversionRateManyPerClick
   - costPerConversion
   - costPerConversionManyPerClick
   - invalidClicks
   - invalidClickRate
   - numOfflineImpressions
   - numOfflineInteractions
   - offlineInteractionCost
   - offlineInteractionRate
   - totalConvValue
   - valuePerConv
   - valuePerConvManyPerClick

The trouble is that while some can be calculated using the remaining 
attributes, others (e.g. totalConvValue, invalidClicks, 
conversionsManyPerClick) are completely inaccessible now that these fields 
are deprecated. My workarounds are failing.
*
Not A Solution #1: Calculate for missing values*
This works great for things such as conversionRate ( clicks / conversions = 
conversion rate), until you need to sort your result set. The good news is 
that while the return values are no longer available, the 'OrderBy' part of 
the selector has so far been able to continue to use them. So I cannot see 
the values, but I can order my result set by them. Where this completely 
fails is if we want to show the Conversion Value or Invalid Clicks, because 
those are being removed completely. Essentially, I will have to take away 
something I have been providing the user with no other explanation than: 
"Google removed it from the newest API version, and we have to upgrade by 
October 26 or everything stops working. Sorry. I know you were using that 
to run your campaigns."
*
Not A Solution #2: Stop using the 'Stats' object, switch completely to 
AdHoc reports*
This one is the ideal way to do it -- if you want statistic data, just ask 
for it from the service that provides it. Except you *still cannot sort 
your report columns*. This is why we have continued to build our reports 
with a hybrid of data from CampaignService and AdHoc reports so that our 
users can choose which metric they want to sort their result set by. We 
have some users that have over 20,000 keywords, ads, etc, so it is highly 
impractical to do the sorting in the browser or server-side. It really 
needs to come back from the API that way. I can see that AWQL supports 
sorting -- for everything but reports. This is our chief complaint for 
users trying to make sense of the SEARCH_QUERY_PERFORMANCE report -- you 
can't sort that by a meaningful metric.

*Not A Solution #3: Push all of the data into a database and return it 
however you wish*
We already do a fair amount of caching, but it is strictly to reduce the 
number of calls to the API. We always want to make sure we are serving 
fresh data to our customers, and the data itself may be requested with 
quite a number of dimensions, making storage that much more of a challenge 
when our only reason to do it would be to sort it (as mentioned earlier).

---

It is also worth noting that the sunset for v201109/v201109_1 are set for 
October 26. We were finally able to download the client library for PHP on 
July 30. That is roughly four months for us to turn around some very 
significant code changes (ServicedAcountService completely replaced, 
deprecated fields, campaign targeting merged into campaign criteria). I 
don't want to whine about it, but these are not the kind of surprises I 
like springing on my management that they need to alter their fall 
development road map because of the "Google Timebomb" that showed up on our 
doorstep. I think we will be able to take it in stride, but I cannot 
imagine what it must be like for smaller organizations, or those who 
haven't quite gotten the hang of this fire drill. I was hopeful that the 
point release program would allow for a bit more feedback/flexibility.

*The tl;dr version of this post:*

   - Deprecated stats fields contain data that cannot be calculated with 
   remaining fields. Why and what should we do?
   - You can still sort by deprecated stats fields. Will that go away?
   - AdHoc reports are still not sortable, even through AWQL. When, if 
   ever, will that change?
   - The sunset period of four months is shorter than previous releases. 
   Why?
   
- Stephen

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