Why does Feature Operation switch to Insert in Feature Writer 2023 Form when it is migrated from 2019?

Did the workspace get updated? when you look at the Last Save Build in the Description of the Workspace Parameters what version do you see? If it still says a 2019 build then this seems like a bug in FME 2023 parsing the workspace, however, if it says 2023 then maybe it's possible someone updated the transformers and didn't check?

From the screen shot it looks like it's not the same file - What happens when you open the 2019 version in FME 2023.1?

If you exported your 2019 FME Server as a backup and restored it the last save version should remain unchanged on the FME 2023 server.

In general Safe try to make sure that their software is backwards compatible - but anything more than two years I find increases the chances of weird backwards compatibility issues and makes the task of upgrading FME Server a bit of a headache that just keeps getting put off. Definitely a good idea to test!

Thanks for the clarifying questions:

When I open the workspace from our repository the last save build is 2019.2.1.0 when opened in 2023 but not yet saved. But the transformer has changed the Feature Operation to "Insert" from "Update". The transformer version shows as 0 in both 2019 and 2023.

When I open the workspace by downloading from the new server, it immediately prompts me to save and then the last save build is 2023.1, but I'm not making any manual upgrades to the transformers.

(In the screen shot it is the same file, it's just that I renamed one copy to keep track of them while having both open)

The weird thing is on the new server, it seems like it's running correctly. In the logs I see updates happening when the writer that is labeled "_update" is run, etc. So not sure what to trust.

I think I might see the issue. The version of the transformer is the same but the choices are different within the AGOL writer parameters. So in 2019 the choices were INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE and now in 2023 they are Insert, Update, Delete, Upsert, and fme_db_operation.

The AGOL writer (rather than the AGOL writer within the FeatureWriter) maintains the old set INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE when opened in FME 2023.

So for example in an AGOL writer I can see the feature operation as UPDATE (upper case). But then when I choose to Update the Writer, it changes the Feature Operation to Insert (proper case) without any sort of alert or warning.