SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor

If you are planning to migrate your SQL Server to SQL Server 2005 please make sure you run the SQL Server 2005 Upgrade Advisor. This free tool provided by Microsoft checks your current installation and detects the possible problems that will occur when you upgrade. The Upgrade Advisor also checks for some Best Practices on SQL Server and it's services.

It is able to check the following:

• SQL Server
• Analysis Services
• Notification Services
• Reporting Services
• Data Transformation Services

Do note that in order to check Reporting Services the Upgrade Advisor needs to be installed on the Report Server, the other services can be checked remotely.

You can choose to check your database(s), a trace file or a SQL batch. When the analysis has been completed a very clear report is created stating the current problems. These are expandable and contain more detailed information. Most of the details contain a link with even more detail on the problem and more important... how to fix it! When applicable the list of objects that are affected by this problem is available too.

This is really a great tool and I would advise you to ALWAYS run it if you are planning to upgrade a database. There are also other tools available when you want to migrate from Oracle. I think other database migration tools will be available too in the future.