SQL Server 2005 and 2008 on same developer machine?

Question

Has anyone tried installing SQL Server 2008 Developer on a machine that already has 2005 Developer installed?

I am unsure if I should do this, and I need to keep 2005 on this machine for the foreseeable future in order to test our application easily. Since I sometimes need to take backup files of databases and make available for other people in the company I cannot just replace 2005 with 2008 as I suspect (but do not know) that the databases aren't 100% backwards compatible.

What kind of issues would arise? Do I need to install the new version with an instance name, will that work? Can I use a different port number to distinguish them?

I found this entry on technet: http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=3496209&SiteID=17

It doesn't say more than just yes you can do this and I kinda suspected that this was doable anyway, but I need to know if there are anything I need to know before I start installing.

Anyone?

Answer 1

Yes this is possible. You will have to create a named instance not used by another version of SQL Server as per the previous answer and version 3.5 of .Net installed. Works great!!

Here the list of prerequisites:

• .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
• Windows Installer 4.5
• Windows PowerShell 1.0

Answer 2

If you have Visual Studio 2008 installed you will get a validation error and you cannot install SQL server 2008 until you install Visual Studio 2008 SP1. If you don't have Visual Studio 2008 installed it should not be a problem. So if you do have Visual Studio 2008 wait till August 11th since that is the day that Visual Studio 2008 SP1 will ship