Jeff Moden (4/3/2012)
The "advantages" you have for THROW are actually disadvantages for me especially when it comes to THROW having fewer parameters. I really hope this is April Fools joke. I'm totally disgusted with what Microsoft thinks "improvements" actually are.
And here I thought it was a better move. RAISERROR can depend on sys.messages, which creates a dependency for the database on the instance. This can easily cause issues in DR situations, or database moves. The idea of getting more contained inside databases means we need a better way. I suppose RAISERROR could have been modified to use a database table, but I'm not sure THROW is a bad move.
It probably needs a little more work, and I'd encourage you to submit ideas to CONNECT and get people to vote for them. I think THROW will work well in the future.