Smallpox vaccinations in the past have been with vaccinia. Even the word, vaccination, is derived from vaccinia. The use of a variola-based immunization would be scientifically interesting, but I'm not sure what import you refer to, since conventional vaccinia-based immunization has been the standard.
Variolination was used prior to to the use of vaccination. It was more dangerous than vaccination with a death rate of about 1%. The recipients were exposed to variola from a pustle from a light case of smallpox by putting it on a small lesion made on the skin. This results in a lighter case of smallpox than occurs when exposure occurs in the respiratory tract. One really serious drawback to this was that it the recipients of variolination were contagious and could spread smallpox and had to be isolated from people who had not been variolinated.
Since I'm not a doctor, I've wondered then why all the hysteria came a couple years ago when the thought of smallpox weapons in the wrong hands first entered the mainstream. Yes, smallpox is a horrible virus, and yes the stores of the virus in the hands of the "good guys" has mostly been destroyed. But, as you point out, the actual smallpox virus isn't what was used for most vaccinations-- vaccinia (cowpox) virus was. So why the hysteria, and what is keeping major production of vaccinia-based vaccinations from getting underway so that cities may be stocked with the stuff just-in-case?