November 12, 2018 at 6:14 am
I am trying to convince my company to upgrade our SQL Server environment to SQL 2017. We currently have SQL Servers running 2008 through 2016. The business is concerned that the vendor apps and custom apps will not run correctly if we upgrade the SQL Servers. Short of extensively testing each and every application, how can I convince them that the applications will run fine if the database is upgraded to 2017?
Thanks
Gordon Pollokoff
Wile E. is my reality, Bugs Bunny is my goal - Chuck Jones
Walking on water and developing software from a specification are easy if both are frozen. - E. Berard
Doing more things faster is no substitute for doing the right things. - S. R. Covey
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.- R. Kulawiec
November 12, 2018 at 6:40 am
We are currently in the process of removing our SQL2008 instances before they go out of extended support next July.
Most of the DBs will be moved to SQL2017 instances but some will have to be moved to SQL2016 or SQL2014 due to third party support contracts. If the vendor is responsible for supporting the application/DB then you need to provide a version of SQL server they say they support even if your own testing shows no problems with SQL2017.
November 14, 2018 at 6:05 am
It would be prudent to do some testing first because of the new cardinality estimator that came in in 2014.
November 14, 2018 at 7:38 am
Well to check the DB Side if everything is OK, you have the Database Upgrade Advisor which gives you a rough estimate if SQL Server will eventually face problems with the DB Code. That's rather easy to check.
With Applications it's a bit of a different story, first of all the question would be if any of the applications have something (like a Service) running on the DB Server. The next question will be how are those Applications connecting to your SQL Server? JDBC, .NET whatever.
All the Applications that connect through .NET might need evaluation if they run on a higher .NET version as SQL Server 2017 requires .NET 4.6 at least. This aswell limits the potential OS to one which supports .NET 4.6
If it's not .NET but JAVA or something else, it's the same story: Does the Java Package has to be updated on the Application / SQL Server side? If so does the Application support the new driver.
A very valid point is that Application Performance might be different with SQL Server 2017 so doing an Upgrade to discover everything is slow without testing beforehand is ... lets say brave.
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