This year we will have the end of extended support for SQL Server 2005. Microsoft has been reminding people they should upgrade, which may be important if your organization requires support for their running software. Personally I think if you're still running SQL Server 2005, and it works for you, why upgrade? If it's working now, it probably will continue to work.

It's been ten years since that version was released, and while it was a huge step forward with the SQL CLR, better mail, and more, it had plenty of issues. Since that time we've had four major releases with a fifth coming this year. All of those versions have built on the base of SQL Server 2005's completely rewritten codebase and have improved many features.

Recently I got a note from someone that noted that they have been upgrading their SQL 2005 systems over the last few years (along with SQL 2008 instances) and have made great progress. however they still have a few SQL 2005 instances that they are racing to upgrade. This person was wondering how many others are out there facing similar struggles.

So this week I'm wondering. How many of you have those instances growing up and getting close to double digit ages? Are you working to upgrade SQL 2005 instances? Have you been thinking about those 2008 instances who are already out of mainstream support and will leave extended support in a few years?

Let us know how you think about your aging database software.