Are there any conflicts between SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008?

Question

I was told that installing SQL Server 2005 with BI tools and SQL Server 2008 with BI tools cannot work together on the same computer. Apparently, “some” things stop working. This was told to me by one of my team members. Since I am new to SQL BI, I can’t refuse what he said at all, and I don’t want to install them both in my dev block and find out later that there is a problem.

Has anyone here installed both of them, used them well enough, and found it working fine?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm not sure if this is your development system or server ... If on your server you can simultaneously provide reporting services on the same server (although you also use twice as many resources). I'm not sure why you would do this; reporting services 2008 are significantly superior and can report data from an instance of sql 2005. If you are concerned about the lack of a service pack for sql 2008, you can report data in sql 2008 from reporting services 2005 ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us /library/ms143736.aspx )

If its local on your own computer, you can install both development tools at the same time ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb500441.aspx ); although in this case I would use sql 2005 tools only if you upgrade to sql 2008 because the SQL 2005 code runs in 2008, but not necessarily the other way around.

If you have report service models, make sure you read Report Builder 2, which was launched this week. This is a much better user interface than Report Builder 1.

Answer 2

I have a full installation of the SQL2005 developer and SQL2008 developer on my workstation. Nothing unusual happened. The college also installed and uses the BI side of SQL 2005, and we did not notice any negative consequences. On the server side, I would think twice before installing both, but only because of the use of the resource. If your box has enough resources, I would not expect any problems.