.BAK or .MDF Files (1 Viewer)

Hi all,

We're migrating to SQL Server 2008 from Server 2000 and everything looks
OK so far.

In the past, we've represented all of our database releases in .BAK files.
To research issues (or calculate data differences) we just restored the
databases and did what we have to.

I take it that Server 2008 can't read the .BAK files it wants you to supply
it with the Server 2000 .MDF file and it will convert it.

We have a lot of .BAK files and I've written an Access utility that will:

1) Connect to Server 2000
2) Restore the .BAK to Server 2000
3) Detach the database
4) Copy the .MDF someplace
5) Connect to Server 2008
6) Attach the .MDF file
7) Create the Server 2008 .BAK file

My questions are:

Should we have based our product definitions on the .MDF in the first place?
This seems contrary to the "normal" approach with something like ORACLE's
export (EXP).

Is there some restore switch that would alleviate this whole issue?

I'm just starting my research, but thought I'd ask first anyway.

Thanks,
Wayne

SQL server 2008 can handle .bak files, it's what it creates when it does a backup.

This article here shows sql server 2008 creating .bak files in the examples

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms186865.aspx

What error message do you get when trying to restore a 2000 generated .bak file?

SQL Hell,

Thanks for the response. The REAL problem is that as we migrate to Server
2008, the IT folks have taken over.

We've had a lot of successful years with Server 2000, but now we are just
database users. At the start of the migration, we have very limited network
privileges and within the database we only have "Public" and "DbCreator".

As things progress, they'll have to extend us more privileges or we can't work.

I can create a database and successfully Restore a Server 2000 .BAK file.
That looks promising. But after I Restore it I don't have the privileges to
view it.

Anyway, my current problems only have to do with privileges. SQL Server
2008 can successfully read the 2000 .BAK files.

I sure do miss the autonomy of full sa privileges ...

Thanks,
Wayne

Wayne,

I feel your pain I had similar situaton a couple of years back where I was working on a contracting role designing DTS packages. There was already a DBA and he wouldn't give me sa permissions, in the end I persuaded him to give me db_owner permissions and add me to the targetservers role in MSDB (which allowed me to create and edit jobs).
That allowed me to do most of what I wanted to do, but I did miss the ability to check CPU, IO and memory usage for a particular process.

SQL Hell,

It's a process. We will slowly but surely extract what we need from them.
They can't do our job, so they'll have no choice in the matter.

It is definitely an unfamiliar experience to be "powerless".

Oh well, see ya,
Wayne