Update Taxonomy

A software update is any update, update rollup, service pack, feature pack, critical update, security update, or hotfix that is used to improve or fix a software product. This chart details the standard terminology for some of the more common updates, and their availability, based on definitions Microsoft provides in a Knowledge Base article. Of all these definitions, only security update is used with any consistency across the company.

Name	Definition	Additional Information	Availability
Cumulative update	All previous critical on-demand hotfixes to date, and fixes for issues that meet the hotfix acceptance criteria.	Hotfix acceptance criteria may include the availability of a workaround, the effect on the customer, the reproducibility of the problem, and the complexity of the code that must be changed.	May be requested by any customer.
Feature pack	New product functionality that is first distributed outside the context of a product release.