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Windows Operating Systems Software Microsoft

Vista Not Compatible With SQL Server 263

Posted by CowboyNeal from the some-extra-patience-required dept.
kiran_n sent in an article by Fortune's Owen Thomas on Vista not being compatible with SQL Server. An excerpt: "But now Microsoft has a problem. Vista, its long-awaited update to the Windows operating system, can't run the current version of SQL Server. The company is working on a SQL upgrade that is compatible with Vista — called SQL Server 2005 Express Service Pack 2 — but it's in beta and can be licensed only for testing purposes. Microsoft hasn't set a release date for the new SQL program."
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Vista Not Compatible With SQL Server More

Vista Not Compatible With SQL Server

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  • Oh NO! (Score:5, Funny)

    by anss123 ( 985305 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:33AM (#17269044)
    I can't run SQL Server on Vista! Christmas is ruined! Thanks for nothing Microsoft >:(

  • If anybody... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NineNine ( 235196 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:41AM (#17269088)
    If anybody is moving critical databases to an OS that isn't even officially released yet, then they deserve to have their eyeballs poked out with hot, metal pokers, and then promptly fired.

    In other breaking news, Oracle does not work with Red Hat Enterprise Linux V.5.

    • If anybody is moving ANY critical piece of software supposed to work, should better think to stay with another OS other than Vista.
      Much better if other than Micsrosoft's anything.

    • Re:If anybody... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by _mythdraug_ ( 27158 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:54AM (#17269214)
      Beg to differ, but the OS has been released to volume customers for about 3 weeks now.
      • OK, then let me re-phrase. Anybody moving an important database to an OS that has been released within the past year should be summarily shot and disemboweled. That's just waaaaay too soon to have any of the bugs worked out. At this point, if I needed to set up MS SQL Server, it would go on Windows 2000 as my first choice, then possibly Windows 2003. I wouldn't consider using Vista for anything more than a home PC for another year (I just started allowing Windows XP into my business recently).
    • ...an OS that isn't even officially released yet...

      RTFA. Vista Corporate Edition went on sale in November; it's the Home editions that haven't hit the streets. Since SQL is targeted at corporations, not home users, one might reasonably expect SQL to work with the corporate edition of Vista.

      -Peter

  • Other Software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:44AM (#17269110) Homepage Journal
    SQL Server is definitely not the only existing software that won't work on Vista. Of course, as always, people will swallow the incompatibilities between versions of Microsoft software much easier than they'll swallow the incompatibilities between Microsoft and non-Microsoft software. Likely, many people will express their anger over the incompatibilities, but not attach any hard consequences.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by HappySqurriel ( 1010623 )
      Likely, many people will express their anger over the incompatibilities, but not attach any hard consequences.

      The unfortunate problem is what kind of consequences can actually be "given" to Microsoft?

      From a buisness perspective, if you stop using Microsoft's operating system you'll have dozens (or possibly hundreds) of applications which are either not supported or not functional on Linux/Unix/OSX; these applications represent Millions of dollars in licences or development that would have to be re-spent imm

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
        ``From a buisness perspective, if you stop using Microsoft's operating system you'll have dozens (or possibly hundreds) of applications which are either not supported or not functional on Linux/Unix/OSX; these applications represent Millions of dollars in licences or development that would have to be re-spent immediately.''

        While I appreciate your concern, the situation is much more complicated than you present it. First of all, there is no need to spend millions of dollars _immediately_; with a lot of softw

  • actually far worse (Score:5, Informative)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 ) <aaaaa@NOspam.SPAM.yahoo.com> on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:44AM (#17269118) Journal
    Actually, not only does it not work with SQL 2005 but it doesnt work with SQL 2000 either. In fact if you try to install SQL 2000 on vista it will try to stop you with messages saying the software has been tested to be incompatible with Vista. MS has not gone on the record that SQL 2000 will NEVER work with Vista [microsoft.com]. They want everyone to upgrade to SQL 2005 and have no plans to fix SQL 2000. If anyone hasn't used SQL 2005, they have removed DTS packages and the replacement is so horribly broken that simple things like copying a table from one database to another does not work.

    Good thing there is windows server 2003 still.
    • Actually, not only does it not work with SQL 2005 but it doesnt work with SQL 2000 either. In fact if you try to install SQL 2000 on vista it will try to stop you with messages saying the software has been tested to be incompatible with Vista.

      So keep running W2K if you want to use SQL 2k. For a business or server environment, a lot of clients don't need more than than that anyway.

      -b.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by minus_273 ( 174041 )
        sucks if you are using the development edition on your desktop and your new machine comes with Vista doesnt it? since this is the el-cheapo $18 developer edition, it is fully functional but does not support connections from other machines. There is no option to run it on another machine unless you use remote desktop.
        • Damn... I didn't think of that. I assume that you wont be able use enterprise manager to control an offsite server with Vista?
          • it complains when you try to install enterprise manager. It might work but even ms says it is unreliable.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Backwards compatibility (Score:2, Insightful)

    by pebs ( 654334 )
    So much for Windows being great for backwards compatibility.
    • Hey! I'm sure you can run Commander Keen perfectly well, after all the work that MS poured into making sure those legacy 16-bit applications. Bah, who uses enterprise-level databases anyhow? That's not the target customer at all.

      Seriously--don't you think that the backwards compatibility people screwed up just a bit with their priorities?

  • This is expected (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:48AM (#17269162)
    Since when has Microsoft rolled out a new operating system that is [100%] compatible with its own existing software? Even though I am no geek, I expected updated versions of existing Microsoft software to come Vista. So to me, this is expected.

    Think of it: Did anyone of you expect the current version of SQL Server to simply play nice with the "new and improved" Microsoft Vista OS, with all enhancements, bell and whistles? Heck, these "enhancements" took more than 5 years to implement! Way more time than was planned. Give me a break!

  • Misleading Article (Score:5, Interesting)

    by carlislematthew ( 726846 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:50AM (#17269178)
    The article is about SQL Server *Express* Edition not working on Vista! This has NOTHING to do with the normal SQL Server edition that doesn't run on "workstation" OSs anyway. The express edition is a local (no network connections) version of SQL Server that developers use to develop against so that they don't need a full server to develop against.

    The article implies (and pretty much states) that Vista doesn't work with SQL server, implying that your client/server programs that depend on SQL Server won't work on Vista. They may in fact *not* work, but it has nothing to do with SQL Server!!!

    The article is written by someone that doesn't know what they're talking about, or they DO know what they're talking about and they wanted to get readers and ad-clicks.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fwr ( 69372 )
      You're mostly right, but not about the no network connections. SQL Server Express defaults to no network connections, but you can easily enable TCP/IP connections.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by shutdown -p now ( 807394 )
      Express Edition is not intended for testing only. It's also meant to be used by desktop software in need of a lightweight database engine; a replacement for MS Jet.
  • If there's one thing the Windows OS team is good at, it's backwards compatibility. I recently heard that a Win32 app I wrote 10 years ago for NT 3.51 still works on Vista. The SQL Server team must have fucked up something big for their code to fail on Vista.
    • I recently heard that a Win32 app I wrote 10 years ago for NT 3.51 still works on Vista.

      We're running a certain real estate industry program that was written in 1988(!) for Windows 3.1 under Server 2k3. In fact, it's one of the only things that we still use Windows for in that particular office, since it's mostly OS X/Linux. To use the program, people log onto the server via Remote Desktop - fortunately, we almost never have more than 2 people using the program, so we haven't needed to buy extra termina

    • Uh, no, Windows is not good at backwards compatibility: the entire OS has changed radically over the last 15 years. There are some compatibility hacks, but old software does not work well on newer versions of Windows.

      In contrast, 20 year old UNIX software compiles, runs, and takes full advantage of modern hardware; the APIs have hardly changed because UNIX got them right in the first place. That includes the window system.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Richard_at_work ( 517087 )

        Uh, no, Windows is not good at backwards compatibility: the entire OS has changed radically over the last 15 years. There are some compatibility hacks, but old software does not work well on newer versions of Windows.

        In contrast, 20 year old UNIX software compiles, runs, and takes full advantage of modern hardware; the APIs have hardly changed because UNIX got them right in the first place. That includes the window system.

        You might want to try that sometime, in practice its not so clear cut on the UNIX side. And yes, I have experience in this area.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zlogic ( 892404 )
      And what kind of app that was, a calculator or a lite version of a large database server? Some old DOS apps still work with Vista, but that's because they don't rely on weird features or specific hardware.
      Visual Studio 2005 says it doesn't work with Vista, but the only real problem is that some kinds of apps can't be debugged, something to do with UAC which is quite obvious since UAC was introduced after VS2005 was released. SQL Server probably has some quirks with the firewall or other security features.

    • Re:Must have really bad code (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DrDitto ( 962751 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:47PM (#17269666)
      SQL Server is Microsoft's best code. It is clean and well-designed. This is well-known in Microsoft's circle of internal developers. The current incompatibility on a desktop OS probably stems from performance optimizations. It is often said that operating systems just get in the way of DBMS systems.

  • FUD at its best (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ThinkFr33ly ( 902481 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @11:52AM (#17269200)
    First of all, the title of the post (and the article's title) are misleading. "SQL Server" (suggesting its full fledged version) was NEVER compatible with Vista, or XP for that matter. It's meant for servers, not desktops.

    Second, Vista is NOT RELEASED YET. Despite that, early adopters can download SQL Server Express SP1, which runs fine on Vista, although it is not technically "supported" by Microsoft. In fact, almost all of the issues are easily worked around by running the setup as admin, and SQL Server Management Studio as admin.

    For those people who have additional problems, there is plenty of good documentation [msdn.com] on how to get it running, or they can install the beta of SP2, which should be RTM by the time Vista hits the shelves in the end of Jan anyway.

    So despite the author's obvious attempts at a sensational title that would get him lots of hits (and, evidentially, posted on Slashdot), his content is almost pure FUD... and pure gold for Slashdot.

    • Re:FUD at its best (Score:4, Informative)

      by thona ( 556334 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:04PM (#17269306) Homepage
      Your post?

      Bet on. One of the most idiotic ever.

      See: ::"SQL Server" (suggesting its full fledged version) was NEVER compatible with Vista, ::or XP for that matter. It's meant for servers, not desktops.

      Wrong, it was compatible. It is not meant to be used on that - on a poroduction environment, but it is compatible, and a good reason to install it on XP is development. Like having a SQL Server avaialble on your laptop. ::Second, Vista is NOT RELEASED YET.

      Bullshit. Serious. Vista was RTM what - three weeks ago? It is even avaialble in a boxed vervion in shops already in limited distribution (i.e. in SOME shops, wide availability is in january). Companies / developers have download access ot the gold/rtm master code for weeks - like my company is rolling out Vista business between christmas and new year on all desktops, and is inthe middle of testing that.

      Check your facts. Idiotic statements like yours make open source look bad.

      • like my company is rolling out Vista business between christmas and new year on all desktops, and is inthe middle of testing that.

        I'm just curious... is your company's CIO brain damaged? You guys are gonna have a really shitty welcome back to work after the new year. Hung over, and having to deal with a completely new platform. Ugh. Good luck!

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by thona ( 556334 )
          ::is your company's CIO brain damaged?

          No. We are jsut a small software development shop (i.e. less than 20 people) and have to provide vista ready software very soon. So far only test environments were running vista, plus limited developer workstations (doubles).

          We take down the whole system between christmas and new year and move out Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007 to our people. ::Hung over, and having to deal with a completely new platform.

          Well, if any of our people have a problem with this they wil

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by GeckoX ( 259575 )
            Wow, you're a real piece of work.

            Where do you work? I just want to make sure there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that I will ever even think of working there.

            Sounds like you work in a code sweat shop, or is it as a spam broker, both maybe? I just get a really really uncomfortable feeling after reading your posts. Something stinks in Denmark I tell you.
  • And obviously even Microsfot knows that very well. Otherwise this mistake woul be stupid in epic proportions. And while I think that MS has reached some pressy impressive hights in OS design supidity, they are not that supid....

  • I dunno what the problem is, I am running SQL Server 2005 64 bit Standard edition on Vista Ultimate RTM. Works fine. Only using it because the application I am developing uses ODBC to the Jet engine which has now been deprecated according to MS, so I had to try something else. Seems to work fine, though I don't use it too in depth yet.
    • Jet has been depricated or ODBC? Oy! Do you happen to have a link to any more info? I just got finished writing an app with an Access back end (easy and cheap). Not that it would be tough to port over, but Access does have some non-ansi standard SQL, and if I'm going to have to switch over to MSDE or PostGre, then I'd rather plan for that now.

      • Re:I am running SQL Server Standard 64 bit (Score:4, Interesting)

        by quazee ( 816569 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @01:04PM (#17269876)
        Although there is no official word from Microsoft about Jet deprecation, Microsoft has stopped actively developing Jet.
        There are numerous clues which may indicate Jet deprecation:

        1. Jet is not ported to x64 platform, and probably will never be, according to MS devs.
        You can only install 32-bit Jet 4.0 SP8 on an x64-based Windows OS.
        Since Jet is an in-process component, it is not possible to use a Jet database in a 64-bit application.

        2. Access 2007 uses its own, non-redistributable database back-end, codenamed Ace. Jet databases are supported only for legacy reasons.

        3. Jet libraries have been removed from MDAC 2.8 package. You have to install Jet 4.0 separately.

        4. Many newer MS articles and whitepapers suggest using SQL Server 2005 Express as opposing to Jet, as a superior technology.
  • Vista Not Compatible With SQL Server

    [Pointless nitpicking]
    Surely, applications are (or are not) compatible with an OS, and not the other way around. An OS does (or does not) support an application.
    [/Pointless nitpicking]

  • Just for clarification (Score:4, Informative)

    by Espectr0 ( 577637 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:15PM (#17269398) Journal
    This is about the desktop version (SQL Server Express). Companies don't run that, so this isn't much of a big deal. The regular SQL Server works fine.
    • companies don't run it? most companies that do sql server development DO run it on the developers systems so they can develop.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Shados ( 741919 )
        Actualy, Express is mostly used for local usage. Like, so a lap-top can use data while on the go, or to do particularly intensive reports that would kill the main database. Or in situations where you would need something like Access, but need full SQL Server features. Or even more, as a full fledged database where you don't need more than 4 gigs and 1 CPU.

        While SQL Express -is- used for development with the Express serie of Visual Studio, any companies that do actual SQL Server development seriously, will u

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by GeckoX ( 259575 )
        He means companies don't run that in production. There will be no need to install SQL Server 2005 on a Vista Desktop workstation for a production system. For anyone that thinks there is, you might want to rethink your line of work ;)

        Express has some minor issues on Vista, but it does work with some tweaking. Once SP2 final is released for it the problems will be solved.

        Bottom line is that the release of Vista, and the not quite finished issues with SQL Express on Vista, are only a problem if you're looking

  • Lame (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nwoolls ( 520606 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:16PM (#17269406) Homepage
    This crap is getting lame. I'm seeing more and more unfounded "articles" on here because they have to make sure they get the stories Digg has. Newsflash folks. 99% of the articles on Digg are fanboy crap. This one is no different.

    What's funny is there are already numerous comments here, but apparently NONE of those judging and commenting have actually tried what the article seems to be talking about. MSSQL Server 2000 and 2005 run *just fine* under Vista. There may be some minor compatibility problems and yes, the installer warns of these, but you can click right through that. Maybe some issues crop up if you tried to use it as a full fledged server solution as is, but for development purposed they work *just fine*.

    Plus, this article is talking about MSSQL Server 2005 Express, which is the local, chopped up locked down version. The rest of the versions work just fine, plus there will be, soon enough, updates to increase the compatibility.

    Please keep this kind of crap off Slashdot. It's fine to love OS and hate MS. But at least get your facts *sort of* straight. This is just way off the mark.

    • Re:Lame (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Shados ( 741919 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:53PM (#17269736)
      Worse is, if someone DARED say something similar about Linux, everyone would be up and arm against them. Like if we saw a "MySQL doesn't work on the new version of Ubuntu!" or something. People would flip, -EVEN- if MySQL was only in some ultra-unstable-experimental-of-doom branch.

  • SQL Express vs SQL Server (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swalters1 ( 1008477 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:30PM (#17269512)
    For those unaware this is primarily a concern for people who develop stand alone applications that currently use SQL Express.

    Why use SQL express? It's more stable and more flexible than just using ODBC to connect to an Access database file. Plus you can use all other features that you can not use in Access. It's also the defacto standard for Visual Studio 2005 developers so it gets a lot of use now adays in development. It's also far easier to use than installing the clients for Oracle or MySQL and reduces your program's foot print. (1.2MB vs 35 MB)

    I actually use this, and when testing Vista didn't run into a single problem with it in it's current state. (It installed and ran fine under Beta 1 and 2 although it warned you that it could be unstable, it seems in RC and RTM they actually added it to the "Can't install" list)

    And there's more than one way to connect to a database, SQL express isnt' the primary route, so the article is being VERY presumptious about impact on the industry. It's not writen by someone who knows the difference between SQL server (The server app that runs on Windows Server 2000, 2003 and uses a client program to handle the connections to a server) and the SQLExpress App (For use in stand alone programs and development environments and will not allow connections from any machine other than the host machine)

    It's also amazing that the author of the article thought that you wouldn't test seperately on both platforms. He makes it sound like having to test on Xp then on Vista is a bad thing. Honestly, if you arn't testing on both and on Windows 2000, you're not doing your job right.

    Is it important? Yes, it sucks to have apps that I was testing under Vista Beta 1, that I can no longer test because of the "no-install" flag. But SP to the rescue!

    As for using Oracle vs MS-SQL, which is the bigger point. Well. having to deal with both at work I can tell you, MS-SQL is far easier to maintain and manage and back up. Oracle still has far too many legacy items in 9i and 10 that require "special" treatment. Not to mention that it's error reporting system is pointless 90% of the time, and we have to hand step everything we do to figure out why we're getting an error instead of a single error message that says, "OCA-XXXXX: Column can not hold data" instead of "ORA-XXX: 'DOCNAME' is too long for column." You can imagine what a pain Oracle is when you've got an SQL statement that a page long. I won't even go into how unfriendly Oracle's support is. Half the time you ask them for help the answer is "If you were an Oracle trained admin you'ld know that." How about, "If you put it in the manual, I'd already know that. Or if your people would reply to emails without the snotty tone I'd know that." Ug...

    Sorry about the rant, enjoy!
    • Sql Express is nice for my consulting business, since we can develop our apps and deliver a backup file for sql 2005 that our clients' IT departments immediately understand how to use an deploy. And each of our developers doesn't need a license for sql server to make it happen.

      That said, we also didn't notice a connection closing problem on one project until after delivery, since sql express limits us to 3 connections at a time, but that was a 2 minute fix.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by larien ( 5608 )
      Huh? How is Oracle difficult to back up? You can:
      • Shut down the database and back up the datafiles (cold backup)
      • Put the database in hot backup mode & back up the datafiles + archive logs
      • Take a database export (not 100% guaranteed but generally good enough)
      Don't know what your options in SQL server are, but I can't say I've found Oracle backups difficult...

  • Ironic (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Broken Bottle ( 84695 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @12:32PM (#17269544)
    It's kind of ironic that SQL won't run on Vista when Vista was originally slated to have a file system BASED ON SQL. They must have had some serious issues with that file system :)

  • Nothing but problems. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Tolkien ( 664315 )
    I work for a M$ Small Business Specialist, and I have a laptop with Vista Ultimate RTM, I also have SQL Server 2005 Enterprise (with Business Intelligence services).

    <rant> Short answer? I hate it.

    The laptop is a 64 bit HP Turion AMD 2000+ with 2GBs RAM (which my boss considered enough to disable the swap file entirely, it barely is: my load average is 1.5GBs).
    One of the reasons SQL Server 2005 craps out (even during the INSTALLATION of it) is because of the new UAC. Info [microsoft.com].

    Also, Business Intel

  • Latest news! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Klaidas ( 981300 ) on Saturday December 16, 2006 @05:01PM (#17271710)
    Some server software might not work on an OS that is in development stage.
    Later it has also been announced that the Sun is hot. We're waiting for more breaking news...

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