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Ten reasons why you should upgrade to SQL Server 2005

• Tags:
• Business Intelligence,
• OLAP,
• T-SQL,
• Update

Arthur Fuller and Stephen Giles

Published: 13 Mar 2006 11:45 GMT

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...various front-end applications (C++, VB, Delphi, Access, Crystal Reports, etc.). You can roll this into Reporting Services with enormous advantages. First, you take all of the logic out of the given front end. Then, you can use Reporting Services from virtually any front end, which means that your application developers can remove a lot of code from the applications. There's one report for all possible UIs, which means that if there's a bug in the report, you fix it once and all the UIs inherit the fix.

6. Business Intelligence is built in.
Business Intelligence was not built in previous versions of SQL Server, unless you purchased the Enterprise edition of SQL Server 2000. Even if you could afford this, you had to master a whole new interface. Using SQL Server 2005, you can do everything you could before, using a clean and integrated interface.

7. Bid adieu to DTS and say hello to SSIS.
SQL Server 2005 completely replaces DTS with a new technology called SSIS, which is a quantum leap forward. We think the coolest part of SSIS is that the data transformation is now an SSIS object. Finally, you can really do flow control and error handling by building tasks outside of the extraction, transformation, and load operation.

8. Upgrade wisely using the Upgrade Advisor.
SQL Server 2005 has introduced new features and changed existing features to help improve performance, security, and manageability. These changes may affect your existing applications. This is why Microsoft's SQL Server team developed the Upgrade Advisor, which intelligently guides you through the upgrade process and points out any compatibility issues that might arise.

9. You now have granular security at your fingertips.
With the addition of the proper database schema, and the ability to assign some administrative tasks without making every developer and junior DBA a full Senior Architect, you can greatly increase the security of SQL Server 2005 by giving users only the rights they need to do their jobs. (Admittedly, some developers might not see this as a good reason to upgrade.)

10. Benefit from enterprise scalability.
SQL Server 2000 has issues when it comes to enterprise scalability, but this is now a thing of the past with SQL Server 2005. It looks like SQL Server 2005 is ready to hold its own against Oracle and DB/2 for the enterprise. It is also significantly cheaper than either Oracle or DB/2 no matter how you measure the cost (whether it's per processor or per seat).
Summary

Even if you have no immediate need to migrate from SQL Server 7 or 2000, you should install SQL Server 2005 because the benefits are huge. You can continue to administer SQL Server 2000 databases without converting them, and also enjoy the cool new extensions in SQL Server 2005. An hour into the new SQL Server Management Studio will persuade you to forget all about Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer. They will seem as old as CP/M.

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