Productivity Gains?

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Productivity Gains?

Grant Fritchey

SSC Guru

Points: 398886
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June 30, 2006 at 6:41 am

#103195

My company is moving to 2005. We've got one major development effort underway that has been plagued by delays. We were hoping to move this effort to 2005 since the release date (Q4 next year) was so far out that we would probably be largely migrated over to 2005 by then. We showed how the current development efforts would not be affected. We showed how any learning curve associated would not affect the schedule. We showed all the technology gains. Two questions were then asked. Is there a possibility of risk to the timeline. The answer, of course, was yes, there is a possibility, but it's very unlikely. The response was that we would not move to 2005. They then asked, are there any development effeciciencies or productivity gains associated with SQL Server 2005? At that, I was flummoxed. I can't think of any, but I was hoping someone else could. Does anyone have anything?
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July 3, 2006 at 8:00 am

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robertk SSCommitted Points: 1608 More actions · Answer 1

I can't think of any real productivity gains. I happen to like Management Studio better than query analyzer, but the basic technology's still the same. I'd argue that you're more likely to see a productivity drain if you decide to utilize any of the new features (SSIS, XML querying, service broker) all because you'd have to learn about these new components and doing so would drain your time.

That being said, you'd be more likely to encounter some obscure bugs in 2005. I've encountered my share of weird query problems and such that are issues that MS is working on for future sevice packs. With SQL 2000, at least you have something that's been through many service packs already.

Sorry, it's probably not what you want to hear, but I can't think of any real productivity gains either without knowing specifics. Sometimes SSIS and XML can be nice though.

robertk SSCommitted Points: 1608 More actions · Answer 2

something else to consider... with anything launched in sql server 2000, you have a limited shelf life of support left.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?p1=2852

April of 2008 is it for mainstream support. With 2005, it's at least until 2011. You can tell your managers that not having mainstream support after 2008 should be enough to be a cause of concern. Would they really want a piece of software that would only be supported by Microsoft for a year and a half?

Ward Pond SSC Eights! Points: 999 More actions · Answer 3

Hello Grant..

If your project calls for manipulation of XML or long strings, you can make a reasonable statement that your productivity will be higher under SQL 2005 than SQL 2000. The XML and nvarchar(max) datatypes are boons to programmer productivity.

Hope this helps..

Take care..

- Ward Pond
blogs.technet.com/wardpond

Johan Bijnens SSC Guru Points: 135369 More actions · Answer 4

- don't forget to mention the scripting capabilities of SSMS / SMO.

- solution-oriented (cfr VS2005) script libraries

- enhanced (out of the box) templates

- XML datatype and XML-schema-binding !

- XML-docs for performance analysis (execution plans, ...)

- SQLCMD is way better than Isql or Osql (e.g. support of external variables, multiple connections in one script, ...)

Johan

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Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398886 More actions · Answer 5

That's very much in keeping with my experiences and research, but I was hoping I'd missed something. I've got two reasons for switching over, one good, one not so. The not so good reason is, 'cause it's the cool kid on the block and I want to hang out with him. I'm a geek, damn it. The other reason is because we'll have to go through extensive financial testing of our software under development and if we don't do that testing with 2005 on the first round, we'll have to re-do it later with 2005, making it that much more expensive to switch over.

Ah well, thanks for the feedback.

"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

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398886 More actions · Answer 6

All darn good reasons to switch to 2005, but none of them really offer actual productivity gains (maybe the templates, but that's pretty slight). Thanks for the feedback.