Downgrade SQL Server 2008 r2 to SQL Server 2008

Question

I need to upload a .bak file to SQL Server. How can I downgrade the database from SQL Server 2008 R2 to SQL Server 2008

thanks

Answer 1

You cannot. Period. That's never been possible with SQL Server (and most likely never will be).

If you have a database backup file from a 2008 R2 version, you cannot under any circumstances and with any tricks or tools restore that into a 2008 version. Just cannot be done.

You need to either find a way to do this using scripting (e.g. script out the SQL structure and/or data), or you could use a structure/data comparison tool like Red-Gate SQL Compare and Red-Gate SQL Data Compare to compare two databases. With Red-Gate's tools, you can also compare a live 2008 database against a 2008 R2 backup file and move data between them.