Restore SQL 2005 system dbs onto SQL 2008

Question

Hello is it possible to restore SQL 2005 backups of master & msdb (trying to get some user stored procs I'd created and placed in them) onto a different machine that has SQL 2008 and if yes can someone point to some info on the steps?  Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

hi

Not its not possible. MS SQL maintains lot of meta-data about the database (including the version it was created) in the master database's boot file and this information is read when you attach the database onto the server and checks against the version of the server. 

The internal version is different than the version of the software like 2005 & 2008. when you attach the higher version database onto a lower then SQL Server fails the required validation. One of the reason is, the meta-data and the system internal tables and structures change from one SQL Server version to another and the lower versions can't handle the higher version structures. 

vt

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Answer 2

Are you planning to upgrade your server? Then you can upgrade during an installation process. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144267.aspx

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Best Regards, Uri Dimant SQL Server MVP http://dimantdatabasesolutions.blogspot.com/ http://sqlblog.com/blogs/uri_dimant/

Answer 3

I might've overthinked it as I simply treated the master.bak file as another regular user db in restoring it onto a SQL 2008 machine (with a different db name like master_2005) which I was able to do successfully which afterwards was able to expand & see all the user objects I had in there.  Thanks to you both for your replies.

Answer 4

If you looking for user created objects then you can generate SQL script on SQL 2005 and deploy them on SQL 2008 that should work-

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