a few simple questions

  • I have a few questions if someone could humor me with them.. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea what the answers will be, but I thought it best to ask.

    Does anyone know the exact release date yet? -- I believe its Q3, but any idea when?

    How long does it generally take for the first service pack to be released? We have some new software that'll be installed 'soon' and we're either going with 2005 or 2008.. if 2008 is out though, it would make more sense to go with that instead of 2005 and eliminate a potential upgrade further down the line.. my worry is how stable will 2008 be up until its first service pack?

    Also, based on the same discussion, and I'm sure the answer to this is a resounding "NO!", but I can remain hopeful for a while yet (until someone tells me different).

    If we bought 2008 licenses.. are they backwards compatible? So could we install 2005 on that machine, with a view to upgrading to 2008 at a later date?

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    I long for a job where my databases dont have any pesky users accessing them 🙂

  • torpkev (7/28/2008)


    Does anyone know the exact release date yet? -- I believe its Q3, but any idea when?

    I don't think anyone knows. The guys over at MS are being exceedingly tight-lipped about it. Irritatingly so... 😛

    Gail Shaw
    Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
    SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability

    We walk in the dark places no others will enter
    We stand on the bridge and no one may pass
  • well nuts..

    any idea on the other part of my question?

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    I long for a job where my databases dont have any pesky users accessing them 🙂

  • SQL Server licenses are backwards compatible to all supported versions. If you purchase a SQL 2008 license, you can install SQL 2005 under that license.

    Unsupported versions (say SQL 7 right now) can also be installed under the license agreement, but they are (I would think obviously, but I guess it's not) not supported regardless of the support on the license you have purchased.

    So, the answer is yes, you can purchase a SQL 2008 license as soon as they are available and install SQL 2005 or SQL 2000 if you need to bridge a gap before upgrading.

    MS does not seem to ever publish a sp release date or schedule before a version release. I suppose it makes a lot of marketing sense to no say your product needs a patch before the product is released. I would suspect sp1 will come out relatively quickly as there has been a list of issues that have been noted as not being fixed in the initial release.

    I would not be so worried about the initial release of SQL 2008 being bug-filled. RC0 was pretty stable. Although it is getting a major release number, SQL 2008 is much more of a big set of additions to SQL 2005. They have not made major changes to the core database engine. If it worked in SQL 2005, it is very unlikely to be broken in SQL 2008. It is a lot of new stuff. Analysis Services - that's a different matter and could probably use some testing before deployment.

  • Thanks a lot Michael..

    That surprises me that its backwards compatible, learn something new every day.. so thats awesome.. im thinking that would be our best bet then.

    Thanks again!

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    I long for a job where my databases dont have any pesky users accessing them 🙂

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