New project sql server 2005 or 2008

Question

I'll be starting a new project (asp.net) and I'll be using sql server express. Is there a reason NOT to use sql server 2008?

P.S: I was considering Postgres 8.3 until I did some benchmarking and found out that sql server 2005 express is much faster for my needs (better integration I guess).

Answer 1

I am currently using SQL Server 2008 Express for my dev machine. You could use the new T-SQL and save some good time writing those stored procedures. I have this version of SQL Server 2008 Express installed.

Answer 2

A reason you might not have considered: will the production hosting location support SQL Server 2008?

Otherwise there's no reason. In fact, if your still stuck using SQL Server 2005, you should be using the 2008 version of management studio! which still works against older db's

Answer 3

If the choice is between SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 with no legacy compatibility issues, you should probably go with SQL Server 2008. The jump from 2005-2008 is much smaller than the jump from 2000-2005 was and you get three years extra lifespan for your application for free. A similar question was asked in this Stackoverflow post, with a more in-depth discussion of the subject.

Answer 4

It is a new project so I don't have to use a certain RDBMS. However I will ask my hosting provider if I can use sql server 2k8.

Answer 5

I'd prefer Sql Server 2008 because there are too many "killer" enhancements like table valued parameters, merge statement, on the fly encryption, new datetime parameters etc. Table valued parameter is a life saver improvement. If you ever had to deal with multi row insert operations, you know how painful is to do it with xml nodes or openxml methods. On the other hand, you can pass your recursive datatable as a parameter ( SqlDbType.Structured ) and the pain is gone. It's so obvious that the most exciting feature for me is new table valued parameter.

Answer 6

It depends on a lot of factors:

• Will you sell installable copies to customers? If so, what kind of database engines does your customer demography have? 2000? 2005? 2008?
• Are you going to host it yourself? If so, use whatever you'd like
• Are you going to use a 3rd party hosting company? If so, what do they support, and how much does it cost?

Unless you're explicitly going to use 2008 features, I wouldn't worry too much about it since generic T-SQL works on all the versions. It's when you start using the new features you might get into trouble.

Answer 7

As a sidenote: DiscountASP is selling, for the same price, 300Mb on SQL2005 and 500Mb on SQL2008. So it turns out that SQL2005 is on a statup path to be considered "old legacy" software.

And it is always good to skip future migrations.

I would go with SQL2008.

Answer 8

Update: It seems that they DO allow sql server 2008 (sales people aren't very good at technical stuff) so I'll be using sql server 2008.

Well I asked my host (I have a vps) and they allow only sql server 2005 express, not sql server 2008 express (which is kinda strange). So I'll go with 2005 for now... Thank you all for your opinions.