Opinions wanted – are you considering skipping 2005?

I had a customer ask me about the debate of skipping SQL Server 2005 entirely and just moving straight to SQL Server 2008… I haven’t thought much about this as most of my direct customers have moved already BUT, I know there are a few out there that have not yet moved.


So, I definitely need to spend some time on SQL Server 2008 upgrade requirements, restrictions, etc. – and that’s my plan in the not-too-distant-future BUT, I haven’t thought much about it so far.


Your thoughts???


Cheers,
kt

9 thoughts on “Opinions wanted – are you considering skipping 2005?

  1. I am an independent consultant working in SQL Server among other things. I am consistently getting customers saying that they are going to be skipping releases. The current schedule is just too frequent.

    So I have some customers that are in 2000, and are now going to wait until 2008.

    I also have some customers that have migrated to 2005, but are going to skip 2008.

    I am hoping it all works out to a nice mix for me, but I can tell you the customers do not apprecaite the releases being this close together.

  2. SQL Server 2005 was such a huge improvement over 2000 (especially for the DBA) with things like DMV’s, online index operations, database mirroring, etc. that I cannot imagine being back on SQL Server 2000. Since it looks like it will be at least nine more months until 2008 RTM, that seems like a long time for someone to stay on 2000, waiting for 2008.

    On the other hand, I have run into a few DBAs who are a little worried about 2008 coming out "so soon", because they are just learning 2005.

  3. We are on 2000 with a few internally developed projects on 2005. We just started our migration project to get off of 2000 and move our db’s to 2005. Considering we are just now moving to 2005, I feel our department will be skipping on 2008.

    As a side note, is there any difference running a database on 2005 32bit and 2005 64 bit? We have a vendor that won’t support their product if we install the database on 2005 64 bit, but they will support 2005 32 bit. I hope we are not missing something!

  4. It took us nearly 2 years to move each application to SQL Server 2005. We will ship them in october. .
    SQL Server 2008 may be interessting, but we will skip that release…

  5. I’m just finishing my SQL Server 2005 development cert. I’m a little bothered 2008 is coming right around the corner, but it’s my fault for waiting so long to get certified in 2005. With 2008 I will definitely be sure to keep my skills up-to-date as soon as this is released.

    As far as some other people saying they’re going to skip 2008, that could be a bad decision that’s made before knowing any information.

    It’s too early to tell when the next version of SQL Server will be released, and if that doesn’t come until 2012, staying on 2005 that whole time might not be worth it.

  6. We currently have all 2000 instances and are planning to skip 2005.
    The impression we have is that 2008 is 2005+, rather than a ‘big bang’ release.

  7. We currently have 90% SQL 2000 and 10% SQL 2005.
    I think SQL 2005 was a great leap for SQL from Microsoft and has greatly empowered DBAs and developers alike.

    But we are going with SQL 2008 for all our new development work. I like the new features in 2008!

    Vishal

  8. We are all SS2K and I am now of the opinion that if MS continue this 3-year release cycle that it will be better from a business position and a lazy-DBA position :) that we wait until ’08 comes out. If we go ’05 now, we would probably jump to ’08 sometime late ’09. If we delay the upgrade and go straight to ’08, we won’t need to mess about with upgrading until maybe 2012.

    Training budget is non-existent and no money for licencing either so this way we can budget for all of that next year.

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