is SPWeb.GetUsageData still available

Question

SPWeb.GetUsageData has been around since Windows SharePoint Services 3. In 2010 SPWeb.GetUsageData still yielded results. However, I have not found a single SharePoint installation either 2013 or 2016 in which SPWeb.GetUsageData returned anything other than null.

I know that "Web Analytics in SharePoint Server 2010" is discontinued.
However it is my understanding that SPWeb.GetUsageData relies on the "Usage and Health Data Collection service application" - which is configured and available in all the farms I checked. The needed TimerJobs ("Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import" and "Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Processing") are disabled on most farms I check, but even enabling them will not make usage-data available.

On one side the SPWeb.GetUsageData help page says "gets a table that contains information about the usage of a website..." it says nothing about it being no longer supported.. But on the other side in the ...\15\template\layouts\usagedetails.aspx (the page that would show the contents of SPWeb.GetUsageData) the table called UsageReportGridView is wrapped inside a <SharePoint:UIVersionedContent UIVersion="4" runat="server"> so it will never show in SharePoint 2013/2016..

So my question is this: Are the "old" (i.e. pre-2010) usage-data informations still supported in 2013/2016?

Answer 1

As per MSDN its supported in SP2013 on-premise, there is no mention of SP2016 (so i assume its not available in SP2016).

the code that i have used to get this done

  SPWeb oWeb = new SPSite("http://sername/sites/test").RootWeb;  

            //SPWeb oWeb = SPContext.Current.Web;   

            DataTable dt = oWeb.GetUsageData(Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsageReportType.user, Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPUsagePeriodType.day);   

            datagrid1.DataSource = dt;  

            datagrid1.DataBind(); 

Answer 2

After having discussed this with Microsoft this is the not-so-offical answer:

The 2010 method SPWeb.GetUsageData() is deprecated in SharePoint 2013.

As a workaround the customer could get the data by directly going to SQL: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj715694(v=office.15).aspx