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Why Upgrade?

A conversation that I have with a lot of people is around the reasons to upgrade from SQL Server 2005 to SQL Server 2008. The problem is that a lot of organisations run Standard Edition and have no compelling reason or need for Enterprise Edition. Much of the focus in SQL server 2008 was squarely targeted at the Enterprise Edition with many of the new features only available in the more expensive version of the product. The SQL Server 2008 release appears to have almost ignored the large number of installations that are Standard Edition. I think that one of the reasons that SQL Server 2008 has not been widely adopted is that there is no compelling value proposition to upgrade from SQL Server 2005 to 2008 if you are running Standard Edition. I would be interested in what your thoughts are regarding the reason to upgrade.

- Peter Ward

Published Feb 24 2009, 10:33 PM by shanetasker

Comments

 

mhaskins said:

The actual need for the 2008 database portion is not high on my list. However, the need for better business intelligence services is. I would upgrade to 2008, so that I could use the 2008 BI suite. Especially due to bug fixes and new features in Reporting Services 2008.

February 24, 2009 3:08 PM
 

pward said:

I would agree that one of the big reasons for an upgrade is for the BI improvements in SQL Server 2008.

February 24, 2009 3:28 PM
 

zzx375 said:

Third party products may be certified on SQL 2005 but not on SQL 2008.  

That is our situation.

February 24, 2009 3:46 PM
 

Hitesh Shah said:

This is true . Product life cycle for database is abt 5 yrs minimum . Releasing product like database 3 years will can give only new customer who are starting fresh and  the old customer will not migrate automatically to new version especially  when lot of technical and commercial difficulties (like the ones everyone is facing ) .

February 24, 2009 10:02 PM
 

zzzbla said:

It's true that there's more differentiation between the enterprise and the standard editions in SQL Server 2008.

Many enterprise oriented features are only available in the Enterprise Edition.

However, Policy based management and Performance data warehouse are available in all editions (PDW is not available in the express edition). Other features are available in other edition as well: log compression for mirroring is available in standard edition, all programmability features are available in all editions (new data types, hierarchyid, spatial, merge).

Most new BI stuff (SSIS, SSRS, SSAS) are also available in the standard edition as well.

I think that our primary target would be to upgrade the 2000 systems to 2008 and start new projects in 2008, and leave 2005 as they are if no new 2008 features are required, and upgrade them to the next new version.

February 26, 2009 10:13 AM

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