Portability of SQL Server applications between 32 and 64 bit versions of SQL Server?

Question

I have an application that is currently running against a 32-bit SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition database. For reasons I won't go into here, I need to move the database to a 64-bit SQL Server 2005 Standard edition running on 64-Bit Windows Server 2003 R2 Datacenter.

Are there any migration issues I should be aware of in the Application code, stored procedures, or SQL configuration? That is, is the functionality equivalent on both platforms?

If there are functional differences, could you post a link to a document with migration planning tips?

Answer 1

The main thing I'm aware of is that the SSIS 32-bit mode version of dtexec needs to be run in when dealing with data sources where there are no 64-bit version of Jet (Excel or Access, basically).

Answer 2

In general, it's a piece of cake. We do that exact thing all of the time, with no problems. Functionality of pure t-sql code is identical (64 bit just performs better ;-).

The one exception to this that I have encountered is extended stored procedures. Since these are written in C they would have to be recompiled as 64 bit binaries. Even then, no source code changes should be required.

If you aren't using extended stored procs you should have no problems.