| Executive Summary:
Each build of SQL Server has a version number. To find your version of SQL Server, open SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). The version number is listed immediately following the system name in the Object Browser. SQL Server 2008, 2005, and 2000 versions are listed in a table attached to this article. |
Most organizations considering SQL Server
2008 have installed one or more community
technology preview (CTP) or release candidates, and
my office, too, has multiple SQL Server installations.
Recently, I was surprised to find that one of the systems
that I thought was running the SQL Server 2008
Release to Manufacturing (RTM) code was actually
still running one of the release candidates.
Each build of SQL Server that Microsoft releases
has its own version number. For example, the SQL Server 2008 RTM gold code is version number
100.00.1600.22. Any lower version number indicates
that you’re running prerelease code.
To find your version of SQL Server, open SQL
Server Management Studio (SSMS). The version
number is listed immediately following the system
name in the Object Browser. You can also find the
version number by running the following T-SQL
statement
SELECT @@version
Table 1 shows all the recent version numbers for
SQL Server 2008. It also lists version numbers for previous
production releases back to SQL Server 2000.
If you find, like I did, that one of your systems
is release-candidate level or earlier, and you want to
move it to the RTM code, don’t attempt to perform an
upgrade. It’s not a supported scenario and could cause
you to wind up with mixed binaries on the system,
potentially leading to problems.
Instead, to get from the release-candidate level to
the RTM code, you need to completely uninstall the
prerelease code. Then you can go ahead and install the
production SQL Server code and reattach your databases.
However, if you’re running an older production
version of SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2000, you
can perform an in-place upgrade to move directly to
SQL Server 2008.