SQL 2005 - worth it?

MatthysDT

Is it worth it upgrading from SQL2000 to SQL2005? What is the big "WOW" in the new SQL? Having six servers, and a large amount of CALS, it's going cost a small fortune.

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Dario Solera

evilnoodle wrote:

Is it worth it upgrading from SQL2000 to SQL2005?

Probably not, but I'm not a SQL Server guru. Maybe you'd like the integration with .NET or the new reporting services.

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Michael A Barnhart

evilnoodle wrote:

Is it worth it upgrading from SQL2000 to SQL2005?

Well, you are the one who has to do a business analysis of your tasks and answer that question. If you are not migrating your applications to use the new features, then no. See what "WOW"s you get and then set up a test box if you have time and budget, and see if any applications justify porting to newer technology. If you do find benefit, you do not have to migrate ALL of the servers, do you?

Duncan Edwards Jones

There are many small and medium sized wows (faster, better dev tools, .NET CLR integration, PIVOT T-SQL support, much better XML handling ) - no big wows as such though

'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd

NormDroid

Around a better version, too many points to list. The UI is better altought slower. Best thing is to install a copy of it and play around, plus go SQL Server[^] website to see new features.

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs

Marc Clifton

evilnoodle wrote:

What is the big "WOW" in the new SQL?

From the couple weeks I've played with it so far, not much. The SQL Server Management Studio is only slightly less klunky than the SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Manager, but the xml data type looks very cool, and the logical schema organizing is cool. Neither are wows. The .NET integration and custom data types, ok, I went "wow" when I saw that. But upgrading? I couldn't find a compelling reason as a user or db admin. I'm only looking at it from a dev perspective. Marc

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Ed Poore

Why don't you setup a test machine with the Express edition, thereby giving you some indication of these "WOW" factors?

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Rohde

OT, but realted: I'm ATM using MySQL (interfacing with Java) for some stuff I do for a small company. I've been looking at SQL Server Express which is free and also usable comercial wise. My question is, is SQL Server more productive than MySQL, more robust? I've just been wondering if I should change to .NET and SQL Server Express for new projects....

peterchen

pretty good link!

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Duncan Edwards Jones

Yes - .NET and SQL Server is a more productive combination than Java and MySql* *In my experience and opinion, however other opinions may exist

'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd

NormDroid

Was that a sarcastic remark because I stated the obvious ;)

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs

Chris Maunder

As everyone else has said: look at your needs and see if it will help. We moved from 32bit SQL 2000 to 64 bit SQL 2005 and had a massive performance improvement. I also redid some of our queries to take advantage of new features such as ROW_NUMBER which, while not giving a massive boost, cleaned up code and did make a difference. The ability to use C# in your SQL SPROCs is interesting but I'm not sure I can convince Dmitry, our SQL guy to implement them. I think "over my dead body" or some such is probably the answer I'll get ;) Oh, and the management studio is much nicer but much slower. Sometimes I wonder if I prefer the faster ADHD enabled 2000 version or the more intuitive hang-on-a-second-while-I-think-about-this 2005 version.

cheers, Chris Maunder

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David Crow

It's been 5+ years since I last used SQL 2000, but when I recently installed SQL 2005 to see what it was like, I found no options for creating databases. I must've installed the wrong version.

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Tim Kohler

The xml data type might be neat or the clr in the database. But, one big improvement hinges around the full text searching. We had full text set up on a large database with sql 2000 and rebuilding the full text index was taking sometimes 10 hours to build from scratch. We switched to 2005 and it improved dramatically (I think we could build it in less than 30 minutes). I believe that if you use full text indexing in your apps, it might really be worth looking at.

Kent Sharkey

As others have said, a bunch of little wows. I really don't count SQL/CLR as I've yet to see a good use of it. If you were thinking of upgrading to Vista - this[^] would probably count as a "must upgrade" reason.

Earlier versions of SQL Server, including SQL Server 2000 (all editions including Desktop Engine edition, a.k.a MSDE), SQL Server 7.0, and SQL Server 6.5, will not be supported on Windows Server "Longhorn" or Windows Vista.

-------------- TTFN - Kent

peterchen

No, I was serious this time. It's pretty uncommon for MS to have a useful feature comparison and prices on one page. They should do it more often.

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Member 96

Functionality wise I can report no difference using one or the other.

Rocky Moore

Chris Maunder wrote:

We moved from 32bit SQL 2000 to 64 bit SQL 2005 and had a massive performance improvement.

So, that is why the site runs so fast anymore? You sure it is not becuase you removed all the looping code ? :)

Chris Maunder wrote:

The ability to use C# in your SQL SPROCs is interesting but I'm not sure I can convince Dmitry

Even for simply patching into the RegEx, it can be worth it, lots of power there! CLR intergration may not be the end all feature, but I am sure we will see a lot more planning in the future to take advantage of the ability. Poke - Prod: Any idea when maybe an article detailing the structure CP's hardware/software and experience building it, would come into being? Sure would be nice to hear the story behind the battle over the CP solution during the last few years and what level of hardware/software is in play now.

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Mike Dimmick

Nice piece of foot-shooting there. If we can't run SQL Server 2000, we won't be upgrading. We need to support the software that's out there. Since the software is still within its support lifecycle it should be supported on the new operating systems. Right now I'm finding that eMbedded Visual C++ doesn't work on Windows Vista Beta 2 - trying to get eVC 4.0 to even install is a huge challenge - so that's another reason why I won't be upgrading.

Stability. What an interesting concept. -- Chris Maunder

NormDroid

I was probably just being a bit paranoid. :cool:

We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs