Migration strategies for SQL 2000 to SQL 2008

Question

I've perused the threads here on migration from SQL 2000 to SQL 2008 but haven't really run into my question, so here we go with another one.

I'm building a strategy to move specific SQL 2000 databases to a new SQL 2008 R2 instance. My question comes with regards to the best method for transferring the schema and data. One way I know of is to do the quick 'n' dirty detach - copy - attach method, which should work so long as I've done my homework wrt compatibility and code and such.

What if, though, I wrote the schema and logins via script and then copied the data via SSIS? I'm thinking of trying that so I can more easily integrate some of my test cases into the package (error handling and whatnot). What would I be setting myself up for if I did this?

Answer 1

Since you are moving the data between servers or instances, I would recommend moving the data via data flows. If you don't expect to run the code more than once, then you can let the wizard generate your code for this move. However, when I did this once 2+ years ago, the wizard code generated combined execute sql tasks that combined many "create table" commands into one task and created a few data flow tasks that had multiple source and destinations in them to insert data in the destination. This was good to get up and running, but it was inadequate when I wanted to refresh the tables one more time after I modified the schema of the new target tables. If you expect to run the refresh more than once, then you may want to take the time to create the target schema first and then manually create the data flows.

Once you have moved the data, then you can enable full-text search on the new server. I don't believe you will need to have this enabled on your first load.

One reason I recommend against the detach-attach method for migration is that you bring all the dirty laundry from the 2000 database to the 2008 R2 database. If you had too lax security on the 2000 server or many ancient users that shouldn't exist, it could be easier to clean this up by starting from scratch. If you use the detach-attach method, then you have to worry about users.