Difference between Analytics and XDB Contact

Question

I am working with Sitecore Analytics version 9 update 2.

There are two contact reference name

1) Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Contact

2) Sitecore.XConnect.Contact

Can anyone please elaborate what is the difference in both where which contact type we will use. Thanks.

Answer 1

These are two different models used for different purposes. To quote Sitecore documentation:

The tracker uses its own model (Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Contact) to represent contacts, interactions, and events. It does not use the xConnect model. On session end, data collected by the tracker is converted to a format that can be used by xConnect (Sitecore.XConnect.Contact). For example, Sitecore.Analytics.Model.Entities.IContact is converted to Sitecore.XConnect.Contact.

• Use Sitecore.Analytics.Tracking.Contact for contact tracking purposes.
• Use Sitecore.XConnect.Contact to save/load contact data to xConnect.