March 4, 2009 at 4:56 am
Personally I am typically an early adopter. But that is for me, at home, where if i don't get email or do my frivolous things, no money is lost. Corporately I prefer to wait a bit. Not necessarily for SP1 or SP2 but for the initial kinks of upgrading to come to the surface. A lot of this has been alleviated with the method of letting release candidates out to the public in several phases.
The bigger issue I face is customers who want to upgrade however can't because the underlying application is not ready for it yet. It can be quite the pickle sometimes. For example one customer is facing memory contention and not because the server lacks but because SQL Server 2000 std does. Logically they would just upgrade to SQL Server 2008 except for the fact that the application version they are running only supports 2000 or 2005. So we go with 2005. Their hardware is slated for replacement this fall and not a moment sooner. If they are replacing the hardware why not just do an application upgrade to leverage 2008 and install 2008 thus giving them a full life cycle on the hardware without interruption. So much plays into it and it can sometimes be hard to empower the customers to make a decision at all because of the complexity of the situations or their lack of understanding.
March 4, 2009 at 5:05 am
I have a project in SQL 2008 to take advantage of spatial data. All the rest of the projects are in SQL 2005.
Projects running on older version of SQL take time to upgrade to the next version of SQL but the ones developed from the scratch are more likely to be in latest SQL version.
"Keep Trying"
March 4, 2009 at 5:19 am
We currently have no systems running SQL 2008. We have a couple 2000 instances, but mostly 2005. We run into two problems as far as upgrading to 2008. Primarily it is that the vendor purchased software that we have is not supported on 2008. Second is budget factors in the sense that newer hardware costs we would have are not typically available in our budget.
As far as whether to upgrade or not I am on the fence. It would be nice to have the latest software and hardware, but costs often prohibit that. The other side is that if your program is functioning well and has been for years, what advantages does one get from simply upgrading the DB.
At the rate we are going, I likely won't see a 2008 installation until well after the next version would be released.
Mark
March 4, 2009 at 6:00 am
Steve -
I agree that Microsoft should adopt a release cycle of ~24-48 months. This encourages innovation as well as adoption. We have a large number of SQL Server DBs here and we have been actively testing SQL Server 2008 for eventual adoption into production. Our test/production cycle here is 6 month long so it takes a little while for us, but we try. 🙂
... Jerry
March 4, 2009 at 6:03 am
In production we have two or three 2005 servers and already two 2008 servers. The other 30 are 2000. We're starting the process of migrating off the 2000 to 2008. It looks like, by and large, 2005 is going to get bypassed at this point. Still, we jump on the new versions as they come out, but that doesn't mean the entire infrastructure moves.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
March 4, 2009 at 6:06 am
Finally got the DVD's for SQL Server 2008 a month ago and installed it on a LAB Server.
We are still pushing applications to migrate to SQL Server 2005 which is part of a server consolidation project. At the pace we are going, I am tempted to wait for the next release of SQL Server instead of trying upgrade everyone again so soon to SQL Server 2008.
There are other factors that will affect this decision such as application database requirements, but at the present we are still a Windows XP shop with 1000's of PC's. If the server team starts deploying windows 2008 instead of 2003, I might consider SQL 2008.
For now it's not happening.
David Bird
March 4, 2009 at 6:32 am
Moved from SQL 2000 to 2005 less than two years ago. I am not an early adopter because I want to keep my job. As for moving to 2008 I really need to see what features have been added/improved that I can make use of. If there are none then I won't waste the money just to have Microsoft's latest version.
March 4, 2009 at 6:34 am
For me, a new release of MS SQL Server every 24 months is far too frequent. As already mentioned in this thread, upgrading from 2000 to 2008 is entirely possible, and at this moment in time, probably sensible.
So this gives us a real-world upgrade period of 96 months! Not what Microsoft would like to hear. Even without the problems of vendors not supporting the latest releases, the main question for a business is: does it work at the moment, and what improvements will we see if we upgrade?
Both 2000 and 2005 have proven themselves to be good, solid, reliable database engines. Why upgrade? Or, alternatively, why spend time and money upgrading?
Admittedly the latest version has better management tools, but nothing that fundamentally improves the DB engine.
Andy
March 4, 2009 at 6:45 am
One of the toughest things is learning the new technology. It's hard to pick up on all the new functionality available. I'm still floundering with MERGE in TSQL and I'm starting a major research project on spatial data, but I know there's other parts of 2005 that I haven't mastered and I'm implementing 2008. 2010.... blarf!
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
March 4, 2009 at 6:47 am
We have one instance on SQL 2000, which we are preparing to upgrade to SQL 2005 and one instance we just migrated to SQL 2008. For us it is dependent on application compatibility and cost. Also I'm the only DBA here (as well as network admin) so SQL upgrades typically get done when the application vendor requires it.
March 4, 2009 at 6:49 am
We are running on 2005 here - but it sounds like this company was a late-adopter of even 2005. We would like to move to 2008 for the better BI - but management still feel the sting of the 2005 purchase. So, maybe we'll have better luck later. Most likely, we will have to wait for the next version of SQL Server.
Mia
I have come to the conclusion that the top man has one principle responsibility: to provide an atmosphere in which creative mavericks can do useful work.
-- David M. Ogilvy
March 4, 2009 at 6:55 am
We are a mixed 2000, 2005 shop. We will be installing 2008 this year on one server due to a vendor. Vendor requirements is what usually moves us ahead or keeps us back.
March 4, 2009 at 6:57 am
We will migrate most of our operational SQL Servers to 2008 within the next 12 months. They're all still on SQL 2000. Our first migration effort was, believe it or not, pretty seamless. It's a classic ASP web application with a SQL back-end. The SQL Server upgrade process went without a hitch and the ASP app worked without any changes whatsoever. This was fortunate because we did all this as part of a DoD certification and accreditation effort for the system. We were taking a big risk doing the SQL migration right before C&A. Now we'll be migrating our other SQL Servers as we have time -- combination of classic ASP, ASP.NET and client/server WinForms applications.
March 4, 2009 at 7:02 am
About a year ago, we upgraded to 2005. At the time, we were considering 2008, but could not go with it because the release date had not been scheduled.
Now already, we are considering 2008 again. It would have solved a lot of problems in the last year if we had it for hierarchy and spatial data types.
Maybe we can get it installed before 2011 is released!
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