Contributed By: Cliff Hobbs [MVP ConfigMgr/ SMS]
A new feature introduced in SMS 2003 SP2 is Decommissioned Discovery Data Record (DDR) Processing.

In simple terms if this feature is enabled (which it isn't by default), when a Client is deleted from a Child Primary Site a notification is passed to the Child's Parent Site (and it's Parent Site, etc. right the way up to the Central), informing it of the deletion.

Some important things to note about enabling this feature:

• You should only enable this on one Child Primary Site per hierarchy branch otherwise you'll potentially have redundant decommissioned DDRs for Clients propagating throughout your Site hierarchy.
   
• When enabled, the Site on which decommissioned DDR processing is enabled will create a special decommissioned DDR (it adds the new decommissioned attribute to the Client's existing record and sets it at "1" before passing it up the SMS hierarchy).
   
• Although the Parent Site is notified of the deletion when this feature is enabled, the Client record is NOT deleted from the Parent's Site database (to find decommissioned Clients at a Parent Site simple query for any Clients that have the decommissioned attribute set).
   
• The only way for this attribute to be reset is for SMS to receive a DDR from a Discovery Method where "Client = 1".
   
• To details on how to enable this feature see the "How do I enable Decommissioned DDR Processing in SMS 2003 SP2?" article.