Posted by Mike Kokordik on Mon, Apr 27, 2009
Upgrading to an immature or new version of any enterprise application can be to say the least, interesting. Such projects can be both rewarding and frustrating. The excitement of implementing new features and improving performance must be balanced with the cost of working through the issues that fresh release brings.
Take for instance upgrading to SQL 2008. I recently performed my first upgrade from SQL 2000 x86 Standard to SQL 2008 x64 Standard (running on Widows Server 2008 standard).
With the risk of over-simplifying the situation, the recent end of life in mid April of SQL 2000 and the much improved performance and features of SQL 2008, It made good sense for this client to upgrade. I was impressed with the backward compatibility and ease of installation of SQL 2008. Migrating databases built on SQL 2000 was surprisingly simple and with the exception of a few coding changes went off with few issues.
Of course experience had taught me to never expect any enterprise application to work "out of box" as they a generally written for a broad user base. With Trigon's relationship with Microsoft, good online technical documentation and a long enough beta process, I was able to find the information needed to perform this upgrade on line with a reasonable resource commitment and time investment.
The bottom line is SQL 2008 is a solid offering with a higher level of stability for a first release than most new enterprise applications. As with any enterprise application, the backing of a good consulting company such as Trigon that has experienced engineers is critical in minimizing any impact on a company's bottom line or end users.