I'm wondering if I'll have trouble installing SQL Server 2008 on my development machine whilst our production server is 2005? E.g. is something change so that my 2005 databases/sps/functions/views will not work correctly or other issues I should think about?
Would like to do this just to test drive the new SQL Server but still be able to develop the old product and preferring not to install both...
I've done this without too much trouble. When you create a database, you can choose a compatibility mode such as 2005, or 2000.
You may also find this helpful: Breaking Changes to Database Engine Features in SQL Server 2008 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143179.aspx
I am using only SQL server 2008 on my dev machine against production SQL server 2005 systems, and have not encountered any problem yet.
Personally I wouldn't. I prefer to keep my dev machine as close to a replica of the live environment as possible (in terms of software at least; physical separation is somewhat harder!).
In many ways the two versions are very similar, and SQL Server 2008 does support compatibility modes, but no matter what you do it isn't actually SQL Server 2005. If your production server isn't using 2008 then you can't take advantage of its capabilities anyway so all you're doing is increasing the chance of something working not quite the same without gaining any benefit.
Presumably the reason you want to do this is to play around with 2008 and see what its new capabilities are? In this case I'd recommend building a virtual machine with SQL Server 2008 and then you can play around as much as you like without jeopardizing the environment you need to get on with your normal work.
Just be aware that some tools may not connect to SQL2008 properly just yet.
Example is VS-DBPro2008. You can't use most of the useful features without installing the GDR-RC, which is still flakey.
Also, if you build something on 2008, you won't be able to detach/attach or backup/restore from the 2008 -> 2005.
Yes. We do exactly this even though our production systems are 2005, and have run into very few issues. While there are some compatibility issues you'll want to know about there are also a few benefits:
Our build machines have Sql 2005 which runs all our unit and integration tests. Our development and production test virtual machines that mimic our production systems also run Sql 2005. This way we ensure our SQL and DDL are compatible with production.
There is no way you can have a development environment that duplicates your production environment. We just install too much stuff on our machines to do our jobs or for downtime.