Software Testing against multiple versions of SQL Server

Question

I'm currently working on a test plan and ran into a possible problem and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions.

The application uses SQL Server and it can connect between the different versions for compatibility (2000, 2005, 2008). Well i'm trying to set up some test machines and was wondering how I should set things up. Should I do each OS against each SQL version, or are there versions/OS's I can exclude due to some reason I don't know. The way i'm seeing things now to test everything would be 9 machines or VM's (last three are preparing for Win7 in future, but not necessary now).

WinXP - 2k, 2k5, 2k8 WinVista - 2k, 2k5, 2k8 Win7 - 2k, 2k5, 2k8

Any ideas will be appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Aaron Foley

Answer 1

Your test plan makes sense, although it's probably not something you'll have to conduct more than once. Just make sure you have some type of automated test plan set up.

At a minimum, test XP against 2k and 2k5, and Vista/Win7 against 2k5 and 2k8.